


The Magnus Murder Polycule

by CureIcy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Aromantic Sasha James, Butterfly Effect, Canon Rewrite, Depictions of addiction, Everyone Lives/No One Dies, F/F, F/M, Healing from your trauma with the power of love and also this gun, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Gets a Hug, M/M, Martin Blackwood Gets a Hug, Multi, Old Men Are Exempt and can Die at Any Given Moment, Polyamory, Sasha James deserved better and I'm gonna give her a whole ass character arc, Swearing, Timothy Stoker Gets A Hug, Trans Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), communication is hard but they're doing their best
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27121072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CureIcy/pseuds/CureIcy
Summary: Little things make a big difference, and love is the antithesis of fear. This is not a tragedy, despite everything. This is a story about humans who were good despite all the odds. Any maybe they fell in love along the way, because they've got a lot of it to give.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Tim Stoker, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, QPR with benefits TimSasha, Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 37
Kudos: 66





	1. A little bug

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for depictions of addiction, canon typical trauma, panic attacks, and generally unhealthy coping mechanisms. This chapter also contains brief mentions of conversion therapy, discussions of religion and implied harm to children. It’s….not quite skippable, but it should be vague enough.  
> 10/25/2020: moved a paragraph from chapter 2 to 1, for flow and pacing reasons.

It starts out with a mistake, and it ends with a family.

It starts out when Jon sees Tim at an alternative clothing shop, panics, runs away to the changing room, and hyperventilates so loudly that Tim knocks and asks if everything is all right.

Jon comes out reluctantly, in more ways than one. He’s wearing a rainbow pin— yes, he knows he’s not straight, but he’s reluctant to label himself just yet— and a denim jacket with various other patches and decorations, each telling the stories he’s so reluctant to reveal in the constrictive environment of professional academia— about anarcho-communism and intersectional feminism and human rights and punk music and anti-capitalism and even the Mechanisms.

Tim blinks for a moment, no doubt confused at seeing his boss dressed like this, but quickly recovers. “Hey, are you doing okay?”

“Good lord, Tim, don’t do that to me,” Jon says, his heart beating so fast he can feel it pounding on his ribs. “Yes, I’m perfectly all right, I just— I try to keep my private life separate from what I do at work. I would appreciate it if you would discount this entire incident and not mention it on Monday.”

“Are you kidding me?” His face lights up in a broad grin. “All this time we’ve been saying you turned into a prick the minute you got promoted, and you were hiding this?”

“You’ve been talking about me behind my back?” Jon asks sharply.

“Um, yeah. Shit. Sorry, bad habit of mine.” He has the grace to look sheepish, stepping back to give Jon space.

Jon steps out of the changing room, hanging the clothes he was planning to get back on the rack. He moves slowly and deliberately, like he’s got all the time in the world, except he really liked the fit of that studded leather jacket and is sad to see it go. Still, it’s excess bagage and will take more time than he can handle to check out, so he’ll find it again later. Finally, he turns back to his previous conversation. “Tim, I would _really_ appreciate it if you said whatever you need to say to my face.” _Coward,_ he nearly adds, but holds his tongue.

“Then I’ll say it right now: I’m sorry I called you a prick and bitched about you to Sasha on my break. Next time, I’ll send you a company memo.”

“Thank you,” Jon replies stiffly. “And for my part, I will… accept constructive criticism. I understand that I’m not wholly qualified for my current position, but in the future I will refrain from taking that frustration out on my employees.” Gah, the words feel disgusting on his tongue, like orange juice after brushing your teeth. People are going to notice, to look at him and say he doesn’t belong here.

“Hey, make sure you include Martin in that, will ya? You two have a lot more in common than you’d think.” Tim shoots him a pair of finger guns.

“I’ll consider it.” He can feel his fingertips starting to go numb and his thoughts drift, so he decides to wrap this up as quickly as possible. “If you’ll pardon me, I have an appointment to keep.” With that, he brushes past Tim and leaves the store, the cool autumn air like a welcome shock to his system.

Jon actually does have an appointment, so to speak; he makes his way to a small park nearby with a fairly clean bathroom, locks the door, and has a panic attack for half an hour. After that, he picks up a pack of nicotine patches at the store, chugs an entire energy drink, and still has enough of the evening left to type a couple follow up emails once his hands have stopped shaking so badly.

Never let it be said that Jonathan Sims is not a master of time management.

* * *

Martin isn’t really that close to anyone here. Or… or anyone. At all. He’s been working here longer than anyone, and a combination of wikipedia, bluffing, and careful application of tea has let him slide under the radar for most of his career. But he knows all of that could fall apart if he talks to the wrong person, so he just doesn’t talk much unless he has to.

Tim is an exception to the rule, but that’s because he’s an extrovert and talks to everyone. And Martin talks back sometimes, occasionally even has what might be considered a conversation. He knows about the CV and promised not to tell anyone, so he should be a safe person to let loose with, right? And Martin _wants_ to talk with him more, but he’s just so incredible it’s intimidating.

Okay, so maybe he has a bit of a crush on Tim, sue him. It’s hard not to, when he’s an academic who’s cheerful and friendly and gives good advice and is always supportive and keeps secrets and makes the best jokes and is openly bisexual and once stated that his dance card is open. And damn if that isn’t a tempting offer, except Martin gets a weird feeling in his chest when he’s staring at Jon and doodling his name and then Tim asks how he’s doing. He doesn’t want to cheat, even in his thoughts, and hates that he can’t decide.

Then again, literally no one could ever love a pathetic wreck of a human being like Martin, so that solves the whole problem quite neatly.

He thinks maybe companionship of a less intimate variety may not be so forbidden, though. He volunteers for follow-up assignments and meets new people sometimes, and they tell him their stories or slam the door in his face and he knows he’ll never see any of them again, and there’s a twisted comfort in not being known.

His favorite such assignment is a woman named Angela with laugh lines etched deep into her face, who sits him down on her couch as they talk over a total of seven rounds of tea. Sometime after the fourth one, she tells him she’s transgender, and they have a long talk about history, about how the existence of queer people has been actively and maliciously erased, and Martin tells her about a half remembered conversion therapy attempt. He doesn’t give the details, not all of them, but the ugly burn on his chest won’t ever let him forget. 

Even his mother had agreed it was too far. And the only good thing that ever came from that day is that she’s never asked him to go to church again. But he stares at the weathered silver cross hanging from Angela’s neck, and asks her how she can be both Catholic and someone who the church by its very nature despises.

“Don’t you know?” she says, a smile spreading the crow’s feet near her eyes wide. “The creator of all things is nonbinary, both male and female. And They wouldn’t damn your heart just for loving.”

Martin isn’t religious. Religion has hurt him far too much for that. So no, it’s not enough to convince him to go back, not even close to it. He gets the feeling that wasn’t the point anyways. But it’s a bit of closure, and it’s something he’s needed for such a long time, and he cries. Angela hugs him, all thin bones and chunky cardigan, and Martin realizes it’s been so long since he’s been hugged by someone.

He’s still riding that high when he comes back to the institute, nothing to report, nothing useful at all, as usual, and a bit of that spark fades.

Jon calls Martin useless under his breath when he commits the piecemeal statement to tape, but it’s okay. It’s nothing new. It doesn’t even occur to him that it’s rude until Jon approaches him and awkwardly apologizes, something about insulting one’s coworkers being unprofessional. He promises not to make remarks like that again, to redo the recording and omit that bit, while Martin nods and thinks about someone who doesn’t hate him for the way he was born.

It’s nice. And for a terrible, terrible moment, he wishes Angela had been his mother instead.

* * *

Tim’s boss walks into work at an absurdly early hour, and for once Tim is already in the break room. He walks out into the main archives, raises his coffee mug, which is absurdly sugary and milky and caffeinated, and calls out a cheerful, “Good morning!”

Jon flinches so hard, it’s only his frantic grip on a nearby shelf that keeps him from falling over entirely. “Tim, will you stop doing that! At least give me some warning; good lord, you startled me.”

“Sorry, sorry. You just— you said you’d prefer it if I didn’t knock.”

“Yes, I did.” Jon sighs. “Tim, can I— can I make an appointment with you outside of work? I’d like to discuss a few things.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that, Jon.”

Jon closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Tim, I would like to meet you not as colleagues, but as friends. There’s something— well, several things that I need to discuss with you.”

“Sure thing!” Tim shoots a pair of finger guns, chugs the rest of his coffee in one go, and returns to the break room to make Sasha’s coffee. Before he goes, though, he turns on his heel for one last bit of advice. “By the way, Sash has suspected about the Mechanisms for a while, judging by some old social media posts, but discounted them. Up to you if you want to tell— I’m a good secret keeper, don’t worry— but I think it would be for the best.”

“Thank you for the advice, Tim,” Jon says, with a tone of strained professionalism that carries the implicit message _please stop talking, Tim._

* * *

Jon sighs, sipping his tea. It doesn’t taste quite right— never does these days, outside of work— but he’s not touching coffee. Too easy for the addiction to start, too hard to break out, too much trouble on top of everything else he has to deal with.

 _You said you’d prefer if I didn’t knock._ Tim’s words keep circling around his head in the same rhythm, like a song fragment lodged in the crevices, burrowing deeper as his anxieties form a scab around it.

Of course, it sounded exceedingly stupid to say he had childhood trauma associated with knocking, so he’d just had to lay out a rule that made him sound like a pedantic, arbitrary prick. Nice going, Jon. Real friendly and logical and competent and professional.

As Jon sets down his teacup, he finds that his hands are shaking, so badly he nearly spills.

He still has those nicotine patches from yesterday. They’re at the bottom of his bag, and it would give his nerves the peace he needs to get through this conversation, and yeah, it’s bad, he shouldn’t but it’s so much better than smoking and it wouldn’t hurt. He needs to be coherent enough to explain this. Tim won’t mind, will he? Or, Jon doesn’t have to tell him, it’s not like what— 

Jon’s increasing rationalizations are cut short when the door opens with a ding, and Tim walks into the near deserted cafe. Jon frantically shoves the patches back into the bottom of his bag.

“What was that?” Tim asks, looking at the bag.

“It’s _nothing,_ Tim.” Perhaps that was too harsh a reaction; he’s been meaning to work on that. “We all have bad habits.”

“Fair enough, fair enough.” Tim orders a coffee, and sits on the chair the wrong way, with one knee sticking out. It actually looks a lot more comfortable that way, and Jon briefly considers doing the same. What’s that old stereotype about bi people sitting on chairs improperly? Jon, for his part, attributes his chair sitting tendencies to ADHD, and had to forcefully break himself of such habits, but the roots cannot be torn out so easily.

Tim looks so comfortable with himself, and Jon is filled with a yearning he can’t even _begin_ to describe. He shoves it back down where it belongs, and a vague uneasiness rises up to fill the empty space, reminding him what he came here for.

“Tim, there’s something about the institute that I don’t trust.”

“What, besides Elias being a sexist prick?”

“Do you ever feel like—“ Jon hesitates, then plunges forward, “like you’re being watched? Every time I record a statement, Tim, I— there’s something else there, something I can sense, and the words I’m reading feel so real. There was a time that I recognized a statement giver’s voice before I called her to follow up— her wife answered the phone, and I knew it wasn’t the right person. I had no way of knowing that, but I did. I quit smoking, but I still know what addiction feels like, and that’s what the statements are.”

Tim blinks. “Geez, I— I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff? Besides the Leitners and Jane Prentiss.”

“I don’t— I don’t know. But it’s safer to feign ignorance for now. Whatever’s watching, if it’s still focused on trying to convince me of its existence, it won’t have time for anything else. Jane Prentiss is frankly too much of a threat to ignore, and— well, let’s just say I have too much experience with Leitners to deny the destruction they cause.”

“If you’re sure.” Tim stares long and hard into his coffee mug. “Hey, Jon?”

“Yes?”

“I _know_ there’s something out there. Something that— it took something from me. So if you need help investigating some supernatural force beyond human comprehension or something—“ He leans in conspiratorially. “I’ve got a stake in this too. So don’t think you have to go off on your own like some martyr, okay?”

“Who do you think I am, Tim?” Jon scoffs. 

Tim gives him an unamused glance. “You’re a dumbass who self-isolates when you’re stressed,” he says bluntly. “I’m just saying, you don’t have to be. Give me a call any time, and I’ll back you up.”

“Thank you, Tim,” Jon says softly. Then, “Really, I mean it. Thank you. It’s nice that I don’t have to… don’t have to be alone in this.”

Somehow, their fingers ended up touching on the smooth surface of the coffee shop table. Jon likes it a lot more than he thought he would.

* * *

Sasha knows that Tim’s trustworthy, that he keeps a lot of secrets that aren’t his to tell, but _damn_ , if she isn’t curious as to what’s been going on between him and Jon.

She doubts it’s a crush; despite not really understanding what those are, she’s seen enough from the outside to recognize it. No, if anything, it looks more like some kind of shared conspiracy. And she can’t help but want in.

Maybe it’s time to do some serious digging into Jon’s college friends. Sasha grins, takes a swig of water, and sets into her keyboard with renewed vigor. Now, where was that picture for the Mechanisms again?

* * *

Martin may be a lonely, yearning idiot sometimes, but he is nothing if not _painfully_ self aware. Not that having knowledge of his issues helps in the slightest bit, really. 

He can rattle off lists of things that his former therapist told him— religious trauma from growing up Catholic and gay, emotional neglect, attachment issues, lack of boundaries, extreme aversion to conflict, undeveloped sense of self, et cetera, et cetera, but he’s not really sure how to fix them, or even where to start. 

Heck, he doesn’t even know if he _can_ fix them, not when his mom still needs him. Not when everyone at work still considers him useless. Right now, he doesn’t have much besides his shitty coping mechanisms to protect him from the world, so that’s what he’ll take.

Self respect is a luxury, and Martin can never quite escape poverty, but he can dream. 

* * *

  
  


It’s only little things that change.

When Martin calls in sick after investigating the Carlos Vittery case, Jon remembers Tim’s advice and goes to check up on him, only to find silver worms wriggling in front of the door, with Martin’s phone lying outside. Jon nearly knocks, then decides on some unknown impulse to just call for him.

There are extended sounds of shuffling, like he’s piled blankets and furniture in front of the door, and then finally it creaks open and Martin’s face pokes through. He’s carrying a corkscrew, and looks like he hasn’t slept at all.

“Is she gone?” he asks. “Jane Prentiss, I mean. Is she gone?”

...well. That’s a lot to unpack, and frankly Jon does not have the emotional capacity for that right now, so after checking Martin for a fever, he decides he’s just going to take good care of Martin until both of them are ready to talk about it.

He hugs Martin tight, and tells him it’s okay, and doesn’t let go until Martin does. He’s feeling quite awkward at this point, but can’t exactly leave, so he decides he may as well just go all in. Martin comes over to Jon’s flat for dinner and compliments him on his cooking, although privately Jon thinks he may just be grateful for anything that isn’t canned peaches. And he spends the night on Jon’s couch, phone plugged into the wall and illuminating his face as he taps away.

“What’s up with you two arriving together?” Tim asks the next morning, thankfully with no implications of a relationship in his tone.

“Martin had a rather nasty encounter with Jane Prentiss, and I let him stay at my flat,” Jon says, stepping in front of Martin protectively. He doesn’t understand why he has this urge to keep him safe, but it’s there, and it’s warm inside of his chest. “I’ll be taking his statement later.”

“Huh. Guess I should get in line, then,” Sasha says, coming out of the break room with a giant off-white scarf and a mug of coffee. “Just met Fuckhands McMike and found out he hates worms and wants to be my friend, so that’s something. Also, we need to invest in more fire extinguishers.”

Tim chokes on his iced coffee.

* * *

They’re all a little closer, even if only little things have changed. Jon’s a little better at handling his addiction, and asks Tim to destroy the lighter for him when it arrives in the mail. Martin’s a little more confident and a bit gayer for Jonathan Sims, and confronts the pair of deliverymen who try to leave a spooky table in Jon’s office. Sasha has an extra spring in her step, and decides to put her personal research on hold to make sure that everyone is safe, so she starts making little PSAs on how to handle worms.

It’s only little things that change, but the changes themselves are not so little. And somewhere far away, a child of the Spider picks up her spindle in dismay. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. But she’s curious about the path it will lead them down, and so she spins and spins the thread for another day and waits.


	2. Full circle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains brief mentions of conversion therapy, and implied harm to children. It’s….not quite skippable, but it should be vague enough.

Sasha may have forgotten why exactly she started down this rabbit hole, but wow, she’s having a blast. The Mechanisms’ music has absolutely _impeccable_ vibes, and she’s so engrossed in the tragedy and chaotic energy and duality of immortal steampunk space pirate roleplayers that she doesn’t even have the heart to tease her stuck-up boss about having a crimesona in college. After all, everyone needs an outlet, right?

It’s really a shame he stopped, she thinks. She did choir for a couple years, and she can tell that his voice is something _incredible_. So what exactly made him give all of that up for some boring life in academia where he does his best to hide himself under that prickly exterior?

It’s at that point that something rattles loudly from Artifact Storage, and Sasha flinches so hard she knocks her keyboard off her desk. It’s a sleek, ergonomic bluetooth device and cracks rather distressingly when it hits the ground, but Sasha is more concerned with whatever moved down there. Some of those things, she knows, can’t be contained. But they’ll play along for a while, until they can catch some unsuspecting prey off guard. You never know until it’s too late.

 _Of course,_ a voice in the back of her head whispers, _you could find out yourself. To Know it is to tame it, and that power could be yours._

So, Sasha does what she occasionally does late at night and pretends that the voice in her head is a five year old in the backseat of her car, who has no idea what impulse control is and should be ignored for the health and safety of all involved. She packs up her bag with practiced efficiency, goes home, and watches gay reboots of eighties cartoons with her roommate until she’s too tired to see straight (pfft) and heads to bed for the night, Odin’s sweet voice still swimming around in her head.

* * *

When Jon was in college, he wondered if he might not be a man.

It started when he met an openly nonbinary person for the first time; after that, the floodgates were open. Jon experimented with pronouns and clothing and makeup, mostly in the mirror while his roommate was out, but sometimes with Georgie.

In the end, he decided that yes, he was a cis man, but he was more willing to experiment with his presentation and much more informed about trans issues . And he was— well, he was open to relationships with any gender, although he found he had something of a preference for more masculine leaning people. And then there was something else, something he never really understood and is still hesitant to put a word to. Something like looking at the world through a window, never understanding the siren call of another’s flesh.

He’s seen people who go online and rant about how they were tricked by the “evil sjw transtrenders”, and how awful it was, but Jon can’t imagine why. He was never tricked or indoctrinated; he was simply lost, and the community’s hospitality was a waystation to something like self acceptance.

And now that he’s feeling lost again, and he can’t help but gravitate towards someone who is becoming an anchor in this storm of muddled emotions: Tim Stoker.

He’s quickly losing any professional justification for these talks, and behind the calculated and efficient veneer, Jon is an extremely awkward person with no clue how to socialize normally. He likes long talks about philosophy on the couch with a blanket over his shoulders and a cat in his lap— although maybe he sometimes thinks about having a partner rest their head in his lap while he strokes their hair until they fall asleep. It’s so hard to reconcile this duality, though; Jon is soft and gentle and wants to be loved more than anyone else, but is sharp and scared of trying and hurting.

When he dated Georgie, both of them were… well, in hindsight, extremely messed up. Georgie was controlling and gossipy; Jon was snippy and isolated himself until his problems went away. Their relationship was never abusive, per se, but it was so unhealthy that they agreed it was hurting them too much. Georgie didn’t complain when he locked the door, just asked if he needed something. Jon didn’t return the favor when she gossipped, just said in a tight voice that he’d prefer if she didn’t. 

They were together on and off through college, slowly learning to communicate and open up, and things got better. Jon set boundaries and explained that he disliked spiders and had trust issues because of an incident in his childhood; Georgie explained that she’d had a mental health crisis after the death of a friend, and they learned to be patient with each other. It was passive aggressive and messy but they wanted it to work and they made it healthier, and they made each other better for it.

They made progress. They made it work. But by the end, they were tired, and agreed to go their separate ways. Somewhere along the line, Jon realized his feelings for Georgie had shifted from romantic to platonic or maybe even familial, a lifeline, who was a part of his life for better or for worse. Companionship, he thinks, may be the word.

But now she is so secure in her identity, so sure of herself, and Jon feels like he knows less than ever in comparison. He knows he will get scared and turn around long before he reaches her flat to ask her this, but Tim is close, and Tim is sure of himself, and Tim is… safe. Yeah.

So before work starts, Jon walks into the breakroom, finds Tim drinking iced coffee with a grin on his face and his jeans cuffed to reveal hand-painted pride flag converse, and figures Tim is in a mood to discuss identity issues. Either that, or he’s trying to piss off a homophobe with the radical power of self love and blatantly stereotypical queerness in the face of adversity; either way, Jon is incredibly jealous. He sits down, stares at Tim so long that it’s awkward, and finally just blurts it out.

“How do you—“ Jon swallows hard. This is too abrupt, but he can’t turn around now. “How did you manage to become so comfortable in your own skin? You— you’re genuine, and you seem happy that way. How— _how?”_

Tim gives him a weird sidelong glance. “You know I’m trans, right?”

“I— I wasn’t aware, no.” (But it’s funny, isn’t it, how things come full circle?)

“Really? I’ve got an instagram with a couple shirtless gym selfies that show my top surgery scars.” Tim pauses. “Okay, maybe more than just a couple. And I think there are some kayaking ones as well. But yeah, I’m pretty open about it online. Because honestly, I worked damn hard for my body, and I deserve to be proud of it.”

“Ah.” Jon nods sagely. “I’m glad to hear you’re happier now. That must have been a real weight off your chest.”

“Yeah, it really was. Felt amazing,” Tim says. And then, a moment later, his eyes blow wide open and he grabs Jon’s shoulder. “Holy shit, did you just make a pun?”

“Yes, I am capable of humor. Shocking, I’m aware. In any case, although not all of it may be applicable, I would appreciate your advice on this matter.” Jon brushes off Tim’s hand and takes a step back, in case he tries it again.

“Huh. Well, for me, once I got past my ‘not like other girls’ phase and realized I wasn’t a girl at all, I felt a lot better. Working out helps too; once you find a good gym and get adopted by some of the locals, it feels great! But if it’s not for you, take up a sport or something. Doesn’t matter if it’s kayaking or dance or long walks in the dog park, so long as you’re out moving, it’s free serotonin. 

“Be true to yourself, and you’ll find out who your real friends are. You can’t please everyone, but you can please some, fight a few more, and ignore the rest. Dye your hair, or cut it, or get your ears pierced, or get a tattoo. Your body is your home, so make it feel like yours. That’s what I got.”

That’s a lot to unpack; probably more than Jon can handle after a confrontation like this, so he puts it away to process later. Still, a little bit of him wonders if maybe Tim’s advice is in direct opposition to the demanding standards of academia, and if so, what the implications of that are. Jon had been taught as a child that only punks and vagabonds dye their hair, that it’s unhealthy and looks awful, but looking at the streaks of lavender against Tim’s dark hair makes it seem like a piece that fits just right.

Jon’s grandmother was not a perfect person. She was strict and demanding and disappointed in him more often than not. But right now, Jon is wondering if her idea of blasphemy is meant to keep him away from his ideal of happiness.

“Thank you, Tim.” Being honest like this is exhausting, and always makes Jon want to curl up in a quiet corner of the library and lash out at anyone who comes near him, but it’s slowly unraveling some of the tension inside of him. “That’s, um. That’s quite an extensive list, but I think I’ll parse through it and let you know what works.”

“Hey, anytime.” Tim shoots him a pair of finger guns and a broad grin, and Jon feels something new grow in his heart.

Oh, _hell,_ he’s catching feelings again.

* * *

Jon locks himself in his office every day and avoids eye contact with everyone for a week until Tim barges in, holding the spare key, and demands to know why Jon is being so cagey.

“It’s none of your business, Tim,” Jon grits out. “Don’t you have work to be doing?”

“I can’t exactly work if the person who’s supposed to be assigning the work won’t answer my questions and has been isolating himself like he’ll die if he so much as makes eye contact with another person,” Tim points out, then his face contorts into an expression Jon’s never seen on him before, and doesn’t want to see ever again. “Is this because I came out to you or something?”

“I don’t have any issue with you being transgender,” Jon says, staring resolutely at the wall behind him. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, I have another statement to record today.”

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, then? You’ve been even more jumpy than usual, and I’m pretty sure you made Martin cry, and Sash has been trying to reach you about follow up, but you’re ignoring all of us. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you don’t have any right to push that on us.”

“ Fine! I think I like you, okay? Fuck off,” Jon snaps.

Tim blinks a couple of times, takes a step back. “...well, that’s got to be the weirdest confession I’ve ever received, and I get quite a few.”

“This never happened,” Jon insists, turning his head away. That was so fucking _stupid;_ why did he do it?

“Okay,” Tim says simply.

“Okay?”

“Yes, _okay._ Is it so hard to believe I respect you as a person? Granted, I don’t always respect your authority, but if the idea of having feelings for me is that scary, I’m not going to make it worse.”

“Good.” Jon nods once, then sighs and runs a hand through his hair, leaning forward at his desk. “I hate it when this happens. I can’t focus, and I know that no one could ever reciprocate, so why even bother?”

“It isn’t a choice,” Tim states plainly. “I’ve said before that my dance card is open, but— I’ll be honest, Jon, at this point we’d just piss each other off, and you’re my boss now, so I’d rather just be friends like we used to. I miss what we used to have back in Research.”

“I do too,” Jon says softly. “I’m sorry I— I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m sorry I took out my frustration on all of you, I lash out, and I don’t know why, and I want to make friends or something but I can’t bring myself to trust anyone.” 

“Yeah, I get that.” Tim takes a seat across from Jon, shutting the door behind him. “Did I ever tell you about my family, Jon?”

Jon starts to say that no, he’s never heard about Tim’s family, but then stops. He has a hunch that may have been intentional, for reasons he’s about to find out. And that hunch is validated when Tim tells him about Danny, from beginning to end, never pausing or stopping, perfectly eloquent. 

Jon… isn’t sure what to say when Tim is finished. Relating his own experiences might be construed as invalidating, and sympathy really isn’t enough. So what about moving forward?

“Tim, I…” Damn it, Jon has never been good at this. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me about that. If there’s— well, anything you need regarding research into this circus, I’ll do what I can to help.”

“Thanks, Boss.” Tim gives a wry smile. “He doesn’t deserve to be another mystery. So I’ll do whatever I can to give him the closure he deserves.”

(Jon’s recorder is running, but he doesn’t realize it until much, much later.)

* * *

So when the worms attack, Sasha is humming a Mechanisms album, Tim is discussing research with Jon, and Martin is reciting a script in his head for how to ask Jon out to lunch sometime. And Jon has a fire extinguisher by everyone’s desk, because frankly his neuroses are justified in this case and he feels quite a bit safer this way, pretenses of professionalism be damned. 

Tim and Sasha, looking for all the world like a post-apocalyptic power couple, blast their way through the worms to trigger the fire suppression system, Jon and Martin get lost in the tunnels and Martin pulls a worm out with a corkscrew more times than he’d care to, and everyone survives.

They’re not okay. They’re a long way from that. But they’re alive, and closer for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed! Comments help me update faster and engage with the fanbase


	3. The mortifying ordeal of being Known

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for non consensual forcing someone out of the closet this time. It’s resolved and nothing bad comes from it, but be careful. Also warning for self harm in the form of scratching.

Someone in the institute killed Gertrude Robinson.

Martin tells Jon this, and Jon tells Tim because that’s the only person he can trust, and Martin joins in with a fire in his eyes because he wants justice for the old woman he found rotting in the tunnels, and Jon sighs because apparently this is his life now. Still, it’s comforting to know he’s not alone in this, and so he arranges to meet up privately before work in the only space he can find with four windowless walls and a door: a cleaning closet.

Except they’ve barely settled themselves in the tight space, seated on overturned buckets and boxes, when Sasha barges in and confesses that she knows about the Mechanisms and also she may have looked at Jon’s search history and she wants in on whatever he’s investigating.

“We’re trying to uncover a murder,” Jon says bluntly. “Are you certain about this?”

And Sasha plops herself down, perfectly crosslegged in a single fluid motion, and grins. “Hell yeah.”

“Wait, Jon, the, the— the Mechanisms? As in, the ‘be gay do crimes’ indie band of steampunk space pirates?” Martin asks incredulously, staring at Jon. “Holy shit.  _ Holy shit oh my god I need to delete my entire twitter and also my existence.” _

“It’s fine,” Jon says, exasperated. “Yes, I had a crimesona in college, yes I would like to dismantle systems of oppression, legalize same-sex marriage worldwide, and commit arson, in no particular order. But academia is not particularly kind to those ideals, so I prefer to keep my irrational dreams separate from my work life.”

“Okay,” Martin says. “But, um, please don’t check my twitter from three years ago?”

Sasha raises her hand. “Too late, I already did. Sorry, Marto. If it’s any consolation, I was the same way about Ashes.”

“What do you mean, the same way?”

“It’s nothing!”

“Martin. What are you hiding from me?”

“Jon, back off. He doesn’t have to—“

An eye opens, and they all feel it happen.  **“What is it you’ve been hiding that you don’t want me to know about?”**

“I had a crush on Jonny D’ville, and I lied on my CV,” Martin says breathlessly, then clamps his hands over his mouth. “I— I didn’t mean to say any of that, shit, what just— I can’t.”

“I’m— I’m sorry, Martin, I don’t know what I—“ The closet is too small, too constricting and the judgement and guilt is clawing at his ribs, and Jon can’t breathe. He needs to get away from this place where he sees too much and is too much, and so he fumbles the doorknob once, twice, and finally flings it open and runs.

He knows they’re all still watching him.

* * *

Jon finds a mirror in the bathroom and locks the door behind him. There’s an eye on his forehead, it’s disgusting and he claws and claws at it but his hands pass right through.

“Jon?” Sasha’s voice interrupts his frantic thoughts. “Jon, either open the door or talk to me through it, otherwise I’m picking the lock.”

A flash of panic runs through him. “Don’t come in!”

“Then get over here. We need to talk about what just happened,” she insists. 

“No. Nothing happened. Leave me alone.” As he speaks, blood drips into his eyes as the one on his forehead slowly disappears, leaving behind only the ragged scratches of his nails. Fuck. He can’t focus, can’t pull himself together, can’t talk to her. He’s pacing, falling apart, can’t, can’t, greedy nosy monster inhuman ripped precious memories— 

“What, so you can self isolate and repress like you always do?”

“Fuck off, Sasha,” Jon says harshly, pulling out a handkerchief to press against the wound, then scrubbing the fabric across like he can erase the disgusting, inhuman memory. He can’t stop. He can’t stop, it’s like a compulsion, and that idea makes him drop the handkerchief in disgust and stagger back. The edges are raw and oozing fresh blood when he looks in the mirror.

“No. I’m not leaving.”

“What do you want?” He almost screams this, turning his head so hard that droplets of blood go flying.

“I want you to talk to me. Try and figure out— I don’t know!”

“What else is there to say? Something is  _ wrong _ with me and I don’t understand it.” Jon starts to pace again, brushing one hand against the wall in case he starts to feel unsteady. “This disgusting, inhuman, monstrous  _ thing _ just sprouted out of my forehead and ripped into Martin’s brain and forced him to tell me something. ”

“We can figure it out between the four of us,” Sasha insists.

Jon scoffs. “I don’t exactly think Martin will want to help anymore.”

“Bullshit. Martin is panicked right now because he takes responsibility for everyone’s emotions, and he feels like you’re angry at him, and he just got forced out of the closet. But you can’t just jump to conclusions like that. Tim’s talking to him right now, but you’re the one he really needs to have a conversation with. Tell him you’re sorry you outed him, and that you’re not angry.”

“Just— give me some time to process, will you?”

“You don’t process these things, Jon. You avoid them. And Martin is going to stew in guilt and panic about them. Just rip off the band aid so you can both move on.”

“Why are you doing this?” Jon demands. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Because my family got fucked over by lies and miscommunications when I was little, and I’m not letting it happen again,” Sasha replies bluntly. “And no, I  _ don’t _ know whether I’m doing the right thing. Or if I’m overstepping. Or being controlling somehow by pushing what I think is the right choice onto you. But I can’t just do nothing and let my second family get ripped apart.”

….oh. That’s, well, news to Jon. He’s always thought if he was just a little better at hiding his quirks, his grandmother would have liked him more. But here Sasha is, with the opposite problem, their trauma in opposition.

And Martin… Martin is probably having an awful time of it. He deserves better. Jon can give him something better than panic and cowardice.

“Okay,” Jon says quietly. “I’ll try it your way.”

“Thank you.” There’s a soft, muffled exhale from Sasha. “I left some food and water under your cot in the storage room. I noticed that’s where you tend to go when you feel unsafe.”

Jon raises an eyebrow, feeling a little better at settling back into the familiar rhythm of banter. “Am I really that transparent?” 

“No, I’m just very good at seeing through bullshit. Martin and Tim are in the break room, if you want to avoid them.”

“Which I do. For now.”

“All right.” There’s a shuffling noise from outside the door. “I’ll be at my desk if you need me. Trying to make some plans for figuring out the murder.” She starts to walk away, and Jon, seizes with a sudden impulse, fumbles the door unlocked and flings it open.

“Sasha, I—“

“Jon, you’re bleeding,” she states, staring at his forehead like a deer caught in the headlights.

“It’s fine,” he insists. It’s not, but he’d rather not explain that he scratched himself open trying to get that disgusting eye out of him. “Well, not fine, but mundane. I’ll take care of it.”

“Okay.” She bites her lip. “Okay, Jon. Please take care of yourself, all right? Believe it or not, I do care about you.”

“I know.” But does he know, really? “I want to believe it. I want to know I care about all of you too.” He wipes the blood off his face with the back of his hand, noting how it’s already begun to clot. His hands are shaking. Nothing about him feels stable, but Sasha looks so steady on her feet that he can’t help but ask. “Can I hug you?”

“Please,” Sasha says, a grin twitching up the corner of her mouth and dying.

“You’re a good friend,” Jon says into Sasha’s thick hair, and his fingers curl around the cables of her jumper.

“I try,” she whispers back.

* * *

Jon cleans himself up as best as he can. He sticks a plaster on his forehead, takes a few sips of flat ginger ale, and eats a cracker or two. His hands are shaking like he wants a smoke, but he threw away any source of flame in the archives for a very good reason.

He manages to pull up a playlist— something about soothing Ghibli soundtracks. He doesn’t even know what that means, but he needs something. His phone’s speaker is quiet, too quiet, but he hums along in that darkened room until his mind has reached some semblance of order.

Jon’s legs are shaking when he stands up. He steadies himself against the wall, drains the small water bottle, and tries again.

If not for himself, he can do this for Martin and for Sasha.

Tim is sitting in Sasha’s chair, and Sasha on the desk, engrossed in an intense conversation that Jon leaves them to. He tries not to think about envy and comfort.

Martin is alone, and Jon aches for him, so he follows that ache to the breakroom, and reluctantly knocks on the door. It’s only polite, after all.

“Martin?” Jon remembers Sasha’s muffled voice from the other side of the bathroom door. “Martin, is it okay if I come in? If you’re not comfortable with that, I can stay out here.”

Martin makes a quiet noise of resignation, which Jon….isn’t quite sure what to do with. He settles for testing the door and entering, leaving it open a crack behind him. Martin is in the farthest corner, and Jon approaches slowly, sitting against the wall so Martin doesn’t have to pass him to reach the door.

Jon knows what it’s like to feel like a caged animal. He’s not going to subject Martin to that.

“I guess Sasha sent you, huh,” Martin says, resigned, and a part of Jon rebels at that. He wants to say he came here on his own. That he came because his concern outweighed his fear.

But Jon is not strong, and he is not loving.

“I’m sorry, Martin.”

“Please don’t fire me,” Martin says, curled up in the corner like he wants to stop existing.

“I’m not going to fire you,” Jon says incredulously. Martin just had secrets ripped from his brain, and he’s worried about his job of all things? Then Jon remembers the well-darned sleeves of Martin’s jumpers, the run down apartment where he lived, the cheap lunches and carefully counted coins, and he realizes that Martin has a greater fear than being Known. “Unless you want to leave, in which case I’ll give you two weeks off and a recommendation.”

“And— about what I said? I mean, are you angry?”

“Angry? Martin, a third fucking  _ eyeball _ opened on my forehead. So no, I don’t mind that you had a crush on my college band persona. Frankly at this point, I’ve learned to never,  _ ever _ google myself, and I have been much happier for it. And the CV— well, let’s be honest, I’m not qualified for my job either. And if you don’t have the proper training, well, that puts some things in perspective.” Jon sighs. He came here for a reason. “I’m sorry I outed you. I’ve been— I’ve been forced out of the closet before, and I know it’s deeply unpleasant or even threatening sometimes, and that’s without the supernatural means. I wanted to let you know that I won’t do it again, and I won’t— I won’t use it against you. It’s— safe? I mean, I won’t make it unsafe. Gah. I’m bi. Or something like it. Definitely not straight. Not sure about labels yet. Or how to define my feelings or separate the platonic from romantic ones. Um, have I gotten my point across?”

He waits, hesitantly, anxiously, for a reaction. He hasn’t told anyone at work about this, hasn’t told anyone since Georgie, really. Sure, Tim probably knows he isn’t straight, and Jon may have mentioned feeling the same way when Tim expressed a yearning to be cradled in the beefy arms of a guy who didn’t mind being the big spoon, but still. It’s different when Jon is spilling his soul about the confusion he feels regarding his orientation, and Martin’s opinion means more to him than he understands.

Martin gives him a hopeful little smile that makes Jon’s heart melt. “Thank you. Um, to be honest, I was a little more worried about how you’d react to the whole— you know, celebrity crush thing.”

“I’ve elected to ignore the idea that anyone would ever perceive me as attractive,” Jon says succinctly, scooting a little closer to be near to Martin. “I suppose— I don’t want to be perceived? No one ever sees who I really am. It’s easier to control the narrative myself. Tales to be told, and all that.”

Martin makes a little hum of assent. “I get that. Make the mask bold enough, and no one will ever see past it and hurt the real you.”

“You ever wonder if there’s anything at all behind the mask?” Jon muses. “Sometimes I don’t think there is. When I was in college, I thought it might be some sort of dissociative dysphoria. That I don’t link the concepts of the image in the mirror and my actual self.”

“Are you…? You know, like Tim. Um, you don’t have to answer, but—“

“No, I’m not transgender or any variation thereof, at least, as far as I’m aware. I just sometimes find it strange, that this is my existence. That I am thoughts condensed by time and shoved into flesh and restrained by the fact that I need things like ‘sleep’ and ‘nutrients’ or I’ll just pass out in the middle of research.” Jon lets out a long sigh.

Martin reaches out hesitantly like he’s going to touch Jon’s shoulder, then his hand falls to the carpet, lifeless, as he bites his lip. “Um, that sounds a lot like dissociation, and it’s one of the symptoms of my anxiety, so, um. I know what it feels like. Like you aren’t you, like there’s no real self, and there are a thousand other existences but you’re tethered to this one and you don’t know why.”

“You get it,” Jon says, almost reverently.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” 

Jon reaches across, brushes his fingers over Martin’s, curls and tangles them together, leans in as his heart splinters open. “You get it.”

“I get it. I’ve been there. I never really left.”

“Does it get better?” Jon asks.

“I don’t know. I learned to cope.”

“You deserve better. Than being scared.”

Martin shrugs, resigned. “I don’t know how else to live.”

“I get that.” Jon thinks of all the times he’s tried to quit smoking before he finally settled on nicotine patches, and of his lifelong battle with addiction of every sort. “It’s hard to change.”

“Guess we just have to cope for now, huh?” Martin gives him a wry little smile that reminds Jon exactly why he identifies as something like bi.

“Could you, um.” The words get stuck in Jon’s throat, but he pushes them out regardless. “Could you show me how? To cope. You seem better at it than I am. Calmer, I think.”

“I’ll try,” Martin promises. He raises their clasped hands, staring at Jon. “Is this…?”

“I don’t know,” Jon says honestly. But he finds he rather likes it.

* * *

Jon gives them all the rest of the day off. They deserve it.

Sasha and Tim trade jackets and take the same train home, hands clenched tightly like a lifeline.

Jon invites Martin home with him and putters around the kitchen, humming half remembered melodies and stress cooking far too much food. He’s almost grateful when Martin recognizes the tune he’s humming and excitedly drags him into the living room to watch My Neighbor Totoro.

It’s a nice escape, a distraction, and Jon is lost in Martin’s eyes as he excitedly babbles about it. He really needs to appreciate Martin more; his passion is infectious and makes Jon want to be better, to comfort Martin just as much as this movie.

Jon wonders in this little bubble of intimacy if this is what home feels like. He hasn’t felt like this since Georgie was—

He shuts down that train of thought before it can go any further, and falls asleep to the sound of Martin’s breathing beside him.

* * *

Jon wakes up with one hand dangling off the bed, wrapped around Martin’s. He leans over, trying to figure out why, and is met with a pair of panicked hazel eyes.

“Um, hi?” Martin’s hair is rumped, and he’s sitting on a folded up quilt from the couch, a throw pillow beside him. “I, uh— hope you don’t mind that I slept here; I’ll wash the blanket, don’t worry. You kept clinging to me in your sleep and wouldn’t let go, so I sort of— you know? I’m sorry, I can move out if you want me to, that was probably crossing a line and— ugh. Fuck. I’ll just shut up now.”

Jon lets go of Martin’s hand, but now he wants to hold Martin’s face tenderly and tell him it’s okay, that what he did was really sweet and considerate.

How does Sasha do it? That mystical thing where she pierces straight to the heart of his anxiety and makes it go away. She sees things from the other person’s point of view, right? Anticipates any possible concerns and quickly refutes them with simple fact.

So Jon gives it a try.

“I’m not upset with you. I think that was the most considerate thing you could have done, all things considered, and it wasn’t crossing a line. If anything, I did that when I fell asleep on you, and I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable.”

“No, no! It was— it was nice, it was really nice and the way you breathe is— comforting? I don’t know; I live alone, so I’m not used to having other people around. Or, I mean, currently I live in Document Storage, but that’s a bit creepy at night and I still get worried about the worms, but— yeah. You weren’t. Crossing a line or anything.”

“That’s— good to hear.” Jon nods once, twice. “Shame about, er, document storage, though. Sash found a statement recently, about the table delivered to Artefact storage, and she thinks there’s something in there rattling around late at night. Seeing as supernatural concerns in the past have been legitimate cause for concern, I wouldn’t be opposed if you wanted to stay here in the long term.”

“Wait, are you— are you sure? I mean, I wouldn’t want to impose, and you don’t have to.”

“Nonsense,” Jon says, picking up speed. “I— I don’t mind your company at all, and your safety is important to me. Besides, I always cook far too much and forget to eat it. Have you ever tried my grandmother’s quiche recipe? It’s amazing, but always goes bad before I can finish it.”

“That sounds nice,” Martin says shyly, and Jon’s heart leaps into his chest because for some reason he has yet to parse, he wants Martin’s company and assured safety. “I don’t think I’ve ever had quiche before, actually.”

Jon checks the time and is pleasantly surprised to find he has enough to finish a quiche before work if he hurries. “Well, I’d like to remedy that. ”

And he does. Martin busies himself with laundry while Jon takes out the ingredients, and helps mix the eggs as Jon shows him the recipe, just how his grandmother made it. In hindsight, he thinks she taught him how to be independent for selfish reasons, but nevertheless he’s an excellent cook. And he likes it, likes seeing the dish come together, likes seeing Martin’s face when he takes his first bite of quiche. No matter where Jon’s skills came from, he thinks they’re put to good use if they can help Martin.

...oh.

_ Oh. _

Jon is having feelings and it’s way too early for this shit.

* * *

That morning, Jon and Martin are the first to arrive, then Sasha shows up looking like she’s got a killer hangover. She promises Martin blood and/or her immortal soul for a cup of coffee, and Jon checks her temperature while Martin rushes off to do that.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jon asks her quietly. “You don’t— Sasha, do you have a problem with alcohol that I should know about?”

“Nah, don’t think so,” she tells him, wiping one eye behind her mirrored sunglasses. “I just felt like getting plastered last night, but it’s not exactly a regular thing. If it gets to be a problem, though, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you.” Jon knows addiction, and he’s— well, he’s worried. And friends look out for each other, right? Friends hold each other accountable. “You weren’t drinking alone, I hope?”

“Nope!” Tim throws the door open with a loud crack and walks in wearing a Hawaiian shirt. “I made sure she drank plenty of water, don’t worry. Also, if David from Accounts comes looking for me, please inform him that despite his denials he is extremely homophobic and I am well within my rights to piss him of by being happy. He can take it up with HR.”

“Oh, that’s who you said you wanted to visit?” Sasha sits down on one corner of Jon’s desk, looking more energetic already. “Yeah, he’s a prick. Doesn’t deserve kneecaps.”

Martin exits the break room with a small mug of coffee, which Sasha chugs in one gulp. Jon suspects whatever was in that mug was quite a bit more potent than the usual brew, judging by Martin’s horrified face.

“Ah— anyways,” Jon says, trying to get them back on track. “About the, er, murder investigation?”

“Already on it!” Sasha announces cheerfully. “I figured I’ll do some poking around online, Tim will do some information gathering in person, Martin will investigate the stacks for anything related to Gertrude Robinson, and Jon, you can keep up the pretenses of regular busywork and push out anyone who tries to come down to the Archives in the meantime.”

Of course, that’s not how it works.

Sasha goes through two laptops and a decent chunk of the technology budget trying to dig up whatever she can find, but electronics and the supernatural don’t seem to mix. She cobbles together a couple of makeshift devices that she hopes can detect the supernatural via targeted glitches, although the problem now isn’t getting them to start glitching, but to  _ stop. _

Martin starts sorting the files to look for mentions of Gertrude Robinson, first by date and then by contents. He’s quite efficient, and no one ever questions that something might be going on when he escorts them away from the investigation with an apologetic smile. 

He gets even better once he can ask for help without fear of being rejected, and picks up the required skills surprisingly quickly. Jon finds that Martin has a much healthier internal clock than he does, and allowing Martin to set the pace leaves him better rested. So it’s only natural that he’s slowly been moving in, really, and Jon likes having him nearby. They’re more productive together, and happier.

Still, what they find isn’t comforting, and the statements seem to have a mind of their own. So as Jon grows increasingly paranoid, Martin offers to share some of the coping mechanisms he uses for his own anxiety. 

Jon watches as the body of Jane Prentiss is incinerated, then keeps the jar of ashes on his desk. When the paranoia is too bad, he gives everyone the day off and stays at home with Martin. When the urge to scratch open his skin and make sure there aren’t any worms inside of him comes, he grabs the ice cube tray from the break room and heads downstairs to the showers and stays there until he can’t feel anything.

It’s  _ not _ normal. And these urges aren’t healthy. But Jon is functional, and doing the best he can to cope without self destructing.

And maybe sometimes he touches Martin’s hand when the latter brings a cup of tea, and sometimes Tim splits the ice cube tray with him and heads towards the opposite end of the shower room without even being asked, and sometimes Sasha offers him advice on how to bolster his laptop’s security.

Jon is surrounded by good people. So he can breathe easy around them. And hey, at the very least, Tim’s exploits provide a bit of levity. Especially when he ends up trying to seduce not one, but  _ two _ lesbians in a row, and comes back looking sheepish. “They invited me out for drinks, but I said no because I’d be too much of a third wheel. Also, fuck the police.”

“I thought you already tried that,” Sasha says slyly, earning a playful swat from Tim. She dodges, of course.

“Listen, you always don’t need to sleep with someone for information. Just ask about their interests, buy them dinner, and let them be the little spoon. The average dude is so starved for attention that if you compliment his eyes, he’d die for you.” Tim shakes his head, sighing. “Seriously. Like, sexism and male entitlement are a problem, dudes should be able to romanticize themselves for who they are rather than what they do, these ideas can coexist.”

“Can confirm,” Martin says quietly, like he doesn’t think anyone will listen or care.

“Do you— do you need a hug?” Jon asks, then blinks, surprised at himself.

“Please?”

And he carefully wraps his arms around Martin, and Martin holds him tight like he never wants to let go or leave him, and Tim joins in and his arms are so warm and strong and safe, and finally Sasha throws herself into the pile, smelling of chocolate and milky tea and laundry detergent.

It’s going to be okay.

* * *

Martin screams into his pillow as his crush of three years ago combines with his current crush and his new crush and— well he doesn’t know how he feels about Sasha, but he thinks it’s more of a platonic crush and he wants to take care of her and know her better? He’s not terribly into women, and he’s fairly certain Sasha isn’t terribly into anyone, at least, not in the conventional way. But now his heart is going wild and he actually might have a chance and his only thoughts are panicked and confused gay screaming.

Well, at least there aren’t any straight people at his workplace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave feedback! Or something.


	4. Is it bi panic if you're bi and constantly panicking?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few things to clear up before we begin. first: this is a Mechanisms AU, but is not in any way intended to be RPF. For this reason, I’ve refrained from Mechs lore so that I can write unbiased, and basically, you should assume no connection other than the voice actors because I thought it would be interesting. This will create some clashes between the personalities of the different characters being merged, but I will do my best to reconcile or flat out ignore that in the text.
> 
> Second: this chapter is when Daisy shows up. Just fair warning

By the fifth meeting of the group, all four of them have a healthy respect for Gertrude Robinson, whom Tim has affectionately nicknamed “arson granny”. It’s rather irreverent, but Jon can’t deny its accuracy. Especially as the pinboard they’re using, color coded by category, has a tangle of orange string crisscrossed in the center, directly over an old polaroid of her.

Martin, Jon, and Tim are sitting on the too-small couch in Jon’s flat, in that order, and Jon is trying to focus on the case, but he’s practically short circuiting from the combination of being deeply touch starved for years and now squished between the two of them. Martin picks up filing cabinets like they’re nothing, Tim carries kayaks on his shoulder, and Jon can’t focus when their arms are next to him and not around him. 

Wait, actually he thinks if they put their arms around him his brain would just flat-out get fried and he’d dissolve into a puddle of mush. Still, that’s not a bad way to go, and maybe it would help him relax. He’s wound up so tightly that letting go of even a fraction of that tension is a shock roughly equivalent to being hit by a motorcycle. And, metaphorically, Jon wants to dive headfirst into the fast lane. Why can’t humans just have cuddle piles like cats do, with no regards for personal space and no ulterior motive beyond warmth and gentle pressure?

“...so, I think it’s safe to say the statement giver was buried alive, judging by the follow-up,” Tim continues, grabbing a mud-brown string from the basket and standing up to reach the pinboard. It’s not far; right in front of them, so that they can all see the connections, but Jon freezes in place next to Martin and doesn’t relax until Tim is pressed up against him again. He feels an irrational surge of jealousy towards the statement giver before he remembers that being buried alive kills people. Shit, he’s really out of it today.

“Hm. Yeah, Decay sounds about right for that.” Martin scribbles something down in his notebook; it’s one of the newer ones that Jon gave him, with a stiff cover and pages thick enough that when Martin is deep in concentration and his pencil breaks, it won’t poke through. Martin writes hard and fast when he’s absorbed in something; mostly poetry, but now a murder investigation. It’s a privilege to watch him work, really. He’s so intense, so passionate, that—

“Jon? Any input?”

Jon startles. “Nope! Nothing.”

“Are you sure? You normally have theories, like— ”

“No. I’ve been, I’ve been thinking? About the way we categorize them.” Jon abruptly stands up and plunges his hand into the tangled mess, moving from one theory to another. “Empty, white. Destruction, orange. Undying, violet. Meat, red. Decay, brown. Dark, grey. And then whatever mindfuckery encompasses Michael, clowns, possibly the spooky computer, as a neon mess. But I feel like there’s more, or something I can’t— something. It isn’t right and I don’t know where to begin fixing it and I don’t know why I have this feeling but I do. Dark is the only one that feels right, and I think it’s tangled up with Decay and Undying, but I can’t find the core of it.”

“Jon,” Tim says gently, so gently that Jon freezes. “Do you need a break? We can stop if you need to.”

“I’m _fine,_ ” Jon retorts, with enough venom that Tim immediately draws back. Jon forcefully relaxes his shoulders. “I’m… I’m just tired. Sorry. That was too harsh.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Martin asks, putting a hand on Jon’s forehead. 

Well, if he wasn’t okay before, now he’s about to spontaneously combust from the shock of his individual nerves being set alight as they try to memorize the patterns of Martin’s fingerprints.

“Yes, yes, quite all right— never been better— um. Well. _Oh look I’d better answer the door!_ ” 

“I didn’t hear a knock,” Martin says, furrowing his brow, and neither did Jon but it’s too late now. Maybe he can run away while he’s at the door. Georgie would let him stay with her, wouldn’t she? She’d probably call him a disaster and brush his hair while she rambled about her podcast.

Aaaaand now he’s fantasizing about someone touching his hair. Jon is halfway to the door and well into a spiral of self loathing and bi panic when the door swings open with a bang.

“Hey guys,” Sasha says, walking in with her breath still coming out in translucent clouds. “Sorry I’m late. Fuckhands McMike glitched out my phone, so I couldn’t text. I was due for an upgrade anyways.” She waggles her phone demonstratively, until it abruptly flickers out of her hand, clips through the carpet, and makes distressing static noises as it remains embedded in the floor of Jon’s flat.

“You might want to call Artefact Storage about that one,” Martin advises her.

“Are you kidding? This could be my breakthrough!” As Sasha speaks, the phone explodes into pixels, then flickers out of existence. “...yeah, that was probably for the best.” She claps her hands. “Anyways! The meeting!”

She leaves her shoes at the entrance and perches herself on the backrest, and Jon is grateful for the excuse to not return to the couch. He doesn’t know whether he was just lucky that she was outside, or if it has something to do with the seam on his forehead that pulses gently, but he doesn’t think he wants to know. And he doesn’t want to see the look in Martin’s eyes when he sees that Jon is still turning into something like a monster.

“Think Elias would accept Fuckhands McMike as an excuse if you brought the receipt to be reimbursed for your phone?” Tim asks, nudging Sasha playfully. “I’m sure he could find ‘cryptid related property destruction’ under one of his spreadsheets for work expenses.”

“Elias? Please,” she scoffs. “He’s even worse than Jon was; still insists that Jane Prentiss only had a rare parasite.”

“You said this— this being called itself Michael, right?” Jon asks, trying to bring them back on track. Elias isn’t even related to the supernatural, and the four of them have agreed not to rope anyone into this unless they have to. “Why do you still refer to it as— well. You know.”

“Fuckhands McMike?” Sasha shrugs, peeling off her coat and draping it over her lap. “Oh, you know, just a little levity to distract me from the fact that I spend my Saturday mornings with an eldritch horror. Also, it’s a lot more fun to say.”

“You’re the only one he’s spoken to. You know his voice. Can you check something for me?” It’s just a hunch, but Jon takes out the recording about the dust bowl, and skips to the ending conversation. Between Gertrude Robinson and her assistant, Michael Shelley.

“Holy shit,” Sasha breathes. “That’s him. Less headachey, but that’s— what the fuck. What does this mean?”

“I don’t _know._ It means something, but I can’t figure it out. Maybe it took that form just to mock us?” Jon’s head feels like it might explode from the influx of new information, and he starts to pace. “Gah!”

“Maybe I can ask him?” Sasha offers. “I think I’m getting useful information out of him, when he doesn’t talk in riddles. If I can catch him in the right mood, maybe I can collect his statement about that!”

“Still.” Tim writes down _Distortion of Michael Shelley_ on a sticky note and adds it to the board, frowning. “Anyone else getting rancid vibes from this Gertrude lady? Bad things happened to whoever was around her, and she just…. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like she held any respect for human life. What was her endgame?”

“Fake her death and mysteriously disappear, only to find that her accomplice turned on her?” Jon guesses. “Seems the most likely, at this point.”

“Do you think she had the same, er,” Sasha makes a face, then points to her forehead, “abilities as Jon?”

Jon finally takes a seat in the faded blue armchair, if only to stop the feeling of all three of them watching him. “I can’t find indications either way. I, I— don’t know, okay? I haven’t _found_ anything, but—“

“Jon, seriously. It’s okay,” Tim assures him. “We’ll figure it out. In the meantime, why don’t you go meet Officer Tonner for this week’s tape?”

Jon agrees almost instantly, and is out the door and away from the mess in his head when he remembers it’s snowing and he forgot his coat.

...well. He can just hurry, right?

* * *

Daisy has learned to trust her instincts, and right now they’re telling her something is wrong with the man approaching her desk.

Sure, he doesn’t look threatening. She’d guess he’s maybe a few years older than herself, a couple inches over five feet, swimming in a cardigan that hangs off one shoulder. Looks like someone you’d find having a stress induced breakdown on a campus library, if anything. But his eyes... His eyes are very wrong. She doesn’t like them. Doesn’t like the way she feels like prey in his gaze. 

He clears his throat, pulling her from her thoughts and reminding her to feign civility for now. “Officer Tonner, correct? Tim— ah, Tim Stoker, my colleague— sent me to pick up the next tape.”

“Right.” Tim is a man of dualities, but ultimately safe— flirty yet respectful, cheerful yet secretive. Still, whatever secrets he has are far away, and therefore not Daisy’s problem. He’s neither predator nor prey, but a piece of the scenery, and if he wants to play detective with ghost stories, she has no objection. It’ll keep him out of the way, if nothing else.

But Jonathan Sims isn’t like that. He is nervous, as if somehow still unaware of the power he possesses. 

No, not unaware, Daisy realizes. He feigns ignorance like he feigns humanity in order to walk among them. But he is hungry, like all the monsters she has faced, and she could smell the disgusting reek of it the moment he entered the building.

“Er— Officer Tonner? Are you quite all right? Your eyes look rather…” he trails off.

“I’m fine,” she says brusquely. “You should worry about yourself; didn’t even come here with a coat. The cold is dangerous, you know.” Daisy narrows her eyes, studying him closely. 

“I’ll be fine,” the man says, finally averting his gaze. Is he… blushing? Or is it just the blood rushing beneath his skin to warm him? Does he even need blood? He passes well enough. His fingers are even shaking realistically when he pulls a cassette tape out of his pocket. “I should probably leave soon, though. It’s supposed to snow later.”

“Sure.” Daisy takes out the next tape from her desk drawer, slides it across the table. “Pass along a message for me, will you?”

“Okay?” He looks even more eager to leave now, and reluctant as Daisy is to let him go, she doesn’t have the evidence. And she can’t exactly kill him in plain sight, either.

“Tell Tim he’s playing with fire, and he should back off if he doesn’t want to get burned.”

“We’re _all_ playing with fire,” he says, with a smile so brief and clinical it’s like a camera flash. 

Jonathan Sims is just another monster to hunt, as soon as she gets the evidence that he’s too dangerous to be left alive.

Except the problem is, as he walks out, he runs into Basira. And judging by their body language and the fragments of conversation Daisy picks up, the two of them recognize each other. This is going to be… complicated.

* * *

It is _really_ not Jon’s day to use the communal brain cell, which is why Sasha is waiting outside of the police station with his coat.

It’s not Sasha’s day to use the braincell either, which is why she has no way to contact him, and left her purse back at his flat. 

She sticks her hands in her pocket, looking up at the sky and wondering if it’s going to snow. Jon picked the wrong day to run out without it; not that she can throw stones, seeing as she lives in a glass house herself.

The door opens and closes, strangers passing through until finally Jon comes out, looking even more tired and haggard than usual.

“You forgot this,” she says, holding out his coat.

“Yes, I know, I know, I’m a stupid bi mess and that was foolish of me.” Jon takes it from her, sighing as he puts it on. His hair is tangled from the wind, and he’s trying even now to suppress a shiver.

“Listen, I wasn’t going to say anything. You looked like you were having a rough time, that’s all.”

Jon blinks in surprise, then shakes away whatever he’s thinking. “Well. I’m afraid the situation hasn’t improved much. Officer Tonner gave me the next tape, but for some reason she’s— I don’t know. She seems like someone to watch out for. And it, ah, turns out her partner is an old friend of mine from college.”

“Do you want to take this conversation back to your flat?” Sasha suggests. “I left my purse behind anyways, and we’re probably blocking traffic.”

“Ah! Yes. Excellent idea.” He sets off at a brisk pace, his gait jumpy and tense. 

Sasha follows him, but she can’t shake that feeling that he’s like her. It’s a hunch she’s had for a long time, but never managed to organically bring it up in conversation.

Well. Given the situation with Tim and Martin, it seems rather like that doesn’t matter anymore. It’s an elephant in the room.

* * *

Jon’s flat is quiet when he opens the door. Someone— probably Martin— has tidied up the living room, and there’s a sticky note from Tim on the fridge. It’s punctuated with hand drawn kaomojis, of all things, and Jon smiles as he reads it.

“Tim’s taken Martin out to lunch,” he calls out. Sasha emerges from the living room, purse slung over her shoulder. 

“Wanna bet on who’s going to go behind the other’s back and try to pay for the meal first?”

“Sasha,” Jon says warningly. Then he grins. “Obviously, Martin will go behind Tim’s back to pay, but Tim will leave a massive tip and steal the waiter’s heart completely by accident. There’s no way I’m taking that bet.”

“That’s oddly specific,” Sasha notes. “Anything you want to tell me, Jon?

“He’s just so nice and amazing and even when he doesn’t mean to flirt, people fall for him!” Jon says passionately. “I just— gah. Do I want him, or do I _want_ him?”

“Do you mean, like, are you experiencing sexual attraction or romantic attraction?” She tilts her head to the side.

“Wait, there’s a difference?

“Of course there is,” she says, as if it’s obvious and not in defiance of everything Jon has ever known about love. “I use the split attraction model; while I’m very much pansexual, dating is complicated since I don’t exactly feel romance the way most people do. For most people, their romantic and sexual orientations line up, but aspec folks tend to need this sort of thing.”

Jon’s brain feels like it’s lagging behind, like Sasha’s glitched out phone phasing through his carpet and ready to explode. “Wait, you mean. Sexual attraction is an actual thing? That people experience?”

“What did you think it was?”

“I don’t know; I thought people were exaggerating! Like when they talk about how much they like pizza. It’s a bastardized fast food that hardly resembles the original; it can’t be that great. Or joking! Tim has casual sex sometimes and he likes to joke!” That’s reaching, and both of them know it. Jon lets out a long sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just easier than believing I’m broken.”

Sasha grips him tightly by the shoulders, her eyes boring into him. “Jonathan Carmichael Alexander Sims, I’m aromantic and I can tell you right now: the attraction you feel or don’t feel does not define your humanity. It never has, and it never will. _Barnacles_ fuck. It’s okay if you don’t.”

Jon can’t help it; he laughs. Because only Sasha would flat out tell him that despite being a virgin (and what a disgusting, outdated concept that word represents) he’s still a lot more human than a barnacle. It makes perfect sense when she rearranges the facts like that, but it’s such an absurd comparison to make.

“Uh, Jon?” She asks, gingerly poking him. “Are you okay? Do you need a hug?”

“Please,” he mumbles, and gratefully accepts the embrace. “I’ve been touch starved all day, Sasha. This morning I couldn’t focus because I was looking at Martin’s arms and thinking about how I want them around me, and I couldn’t get anything useful to contribute to the discussion and now they’re all worried about me.”

“Yeah, that’s because they care about you.”

“That’s the scary part.” Maybe it’s selfish, but Jon doesn’t want to let go. Jon hasn’t allowed himself to be selfish since he was a child, and now he wants it all. He wants to take care of his friends and learn more about their interests and be crushed under the gentle pressure of someone else’s body, and he wants it so badly it hurts. He’s touch starved and lonely and so full of love that it’s killing him.

Maybe, for now, Sasha can help to teach him how he loves. He doesn’t feel it in the same way as the rest of the world, but no one ever told him it was okay until now.

“Er— would **you mind—** gah.”

“The compulsion thing is getting worse, isn’t it.” Sasha pulls away, and Jon swears he can feel the cold air rushing in to fill the space.

“I think so,” he says quietly. “I was, um. I was wondering if you wanted to stay for a while, and if you could explain this whole split attraction model to me.”

“Of course!” Sasha grins, steepling her hands like she’s plotting something. “It’s been a while since I’ve had anyone new to infodump about this with. What about lunch?”

Jon huffs, already knowing what she has in mind. “Yes, yes, I’ll cook something. I _could_ teach you, you know.”

She shrugs. “Sorry, Jon. All I know is be bisexual, eat hot chip, and lie.”

“You’re a horrible liar.”

“And more like pansexual, but still. Can’t cook to save my life, and you’re amazing at it!”

“Enough with the flattery already,” Jon grumbles.

“Is it really flattery if it’s true?” She counters.

Jon can’t argue with that, so he settles for changing the subject. “Let’s start with the food. Best not to have serious discussions on an empty stomach, right?”

Jon prepares a pan of fried rice to the familiar cadence of their banter, and they spend the rest of the afternoon curled up on the couch as Sasha explains the intricacies of a community that Jon thinks he could be part of. It explains— it explains so much; how isolating it felt, how he developed a distorted view of sex as a result of the expectation that he was supposed to have it; even the disconnect he felt from his gender. Men are supposed to be aggressive and defined by their dominance, but Jon is passive aggressive at worst and daydreams about being spooned. And now that he has the words to understand it, he can redefine masculinity on his own terms.

Split attraction. Biromantic and asexual. The words are stiff on his tongue, but they’ll soften with time.

What is love? Is it a kind of attraction, chemicals reacting in the mind? Is it solidarity, a bridge, a wall?

Maybe it’s impossible to define. Or maybe it’s something like the snowflakes that land in Sasha’s hair as she hugs him goodbye at the door.

* * *

Jon dreams that night.

He dreams he’s figured it out, that he’s found the core categorizations of the statements, and sorted them by color. He’s finally succeeded. He doesn’t have to search anymore.

But the strings all tie back to him, creating a looping mesh of yarn across his body, and no matter how much he pulls, they only tighten around him.

He’s caught in a spider’s web, and can’t even scream when a man without a face comes and wraps him tighter, tighter in a cocoon of yarn until he’s suffocating and can’t breathe.

Then he stops breathing and dissolves into green fibers, twisting himself into something new.

Jon wakes up at 2:39 AM with a start.

* * *

Martin sees Jon’s presence before he hears it.

When Jon is at the office, he moves abruptly from room to room with a brisk air that makes Martin suppress a flinch. But here in his home, he’s quiet, sliding around on socked feet like he’s still being haunted by a childhood ghost. The fact remains that there is a difference between making oneself small out of fear, and doing so out of kindness.

(Martin learned that a long time ago, and the fact that he is not kind but a coward still haunts him.)

So it’s the stove light from the kitchen and not the gentle rattling of cutlery in the drawer that draws Martin in, still wrapped in a blanket, to see what the matter is.

“Oh— did I wake you?” A spoon slips out of Jon’s hands and clatters on the tile with a sound that makes the both of them flinch.

“It’s okay, I’ll get it— ”

“Martin, please don’t trouble yourself--”

“It’s fine, just— ”

Their hands meet over the spoon, and Martin— Martin touches his hand, and grabs it on impulse. It’s freezing, but he doesn’t let go. Doesn’t want to let go until it’s warm, and even then, he thinks he wants to hold Jon’s hand. Just hold it, just keep him close. Hold him tight.

“Um, hi,” Jon whispers, his eyes faintly reflecting the moonlight.

“Hi,” Martin whispers back. “Why are we whispering?”

“I don’t know.” Jon gives a half smile, and they share a quiet laugh, together in the semi-darkness. “Sorry. I had a nightmare, and needed a snack.”

“I’ll. Uh. I’ll make you tea!” Martin drops Jon’s hands and turns to the stove, busying himself with getting out the kettle. God, he hopes Jon can’t see how much he’s blushing.

“Something caffeinated, please. I don’t want to sleep anymore. I… don’t want to risk dreaming.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Martin asks, already reaching for the tea. Jon keeps a rather pitiful selection at home and uses the microwave to heat the water, so Martin picked up some new tea tins to keep in the cabinet. His old ones ran out long ago, and when he accidentally infodumped about tea to Jon, well. Jon was excited to learn, surprisingly, and insisted on going to buy some. He’s quickly learning how to make a proper cup, even though he insists he’ll never be as good as Martin.

“Not really, no.” The soft rustle of fabric against wood tells Martin that Jon’s sitting down, and he looks back to find him taking the hoodie Martin left there earlier that evening and wrapping it around himself. It’s… absolutely unfair how cute he looks, and Martin turns back to making tea before he can somehow ruin it because he’s distracted.

Martin hums softly to himself, waiting for the water to heat up.Jon gets back up and rummages around the fridge until he finds some leftover biscuits and gravy from that morning. Or yesterday morning, Martin supposes, since technically it’s past midnight.

He’s going to miss these moments when this inevitably ends.

The tea is ready all too soon, and Martin pours Jon a mug and is ready to go back to bed when Jon’s arm shoots out and grabs him by the wrist.

“Stay,” he says, and it’s all Martin can do not to cry at the raw emotion in his voice.

* * *

Martin’s wrist underneath his fingers is warm and cold all at the same time, but Jon can’t let go. The connection feels electric somehow, like they’ve made contact for the first time and he has so much he needs to say but if he’s rejected, he’ll overload and short-circuit. Jon’s starting to feel like maybe getting lost forever in the tunnels wasn’t such a bad idea, but it’s too late to take it back now. Martin is here, and with him, and maybe Jon can make some progress for once instead of fighting against the current to regain what he’s lost.

“I like having you around,” he tells Martin quietly. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I— I guess I thought it would be presumptuous of me to assume, and I didn’t want to ask in case it came off like I was fishing for a compliment.”

“I trust you, Martin.” _I choose to trust you. It isn’t easy for me to trust people, but I’m giving you this._ Jon lets go of Martin’s hand, folding his arms around himself as Martin settles into the other chair. “And I realized something about myself today, and wanted to tell you first.”

“Oh!” Martin blinks in surprise. “Um, thank you.”

“Sasha— she helped me figure it out, and I’m, ah. I’m asexual, I think. I’m fairly certain, actually. Um, do you need me to explain—“

Martin shakes his head, with a tiny smile. “I had a friend who was ace in high school, so…. I did my research. Um, can I ask about your romantic orientation?”

“Bi. Very much bi.” Jon is staring at Martin, but he can’t look away. He hopes the yearning isn’t too evident in his gaze, just like he hopes he’s reading Martin’s expression correctly when he sees that same yearning reflected. Jon is throwing himself onto hope like a knife’s edge, and it’s too late to back down. “I, um. I mean, if you… you know. I’m interested. Just need to uh, sort some things out first.” If he’s reading the signals wrong, Jon prays to whoever might be listening that he spontaneously combusts on the spot. Wait, no. Then Martin would feel bad.

“Jon, are we…?” He lets the sentence hang. “I want to, but do you?”

“I really don’t know, Martin. I— I know I care about you, but not what that means or how to define it or— I, I’m really not comfortable starting a relationship with you while you’re technically my employee _and_ still living in my house. It’s not fair to you. I want to be on even ground.”

“Okay.” Martin nods, keeps nodding a little too long.“Okay, that’s, um, that’s fair. And I, well, I’m glad you brought that up? I mean I’d _like_ to be in a relationship with you, but— that’s a valid concern. The imbalance, I mean. But I guess that just makes me feel better, about you being a good person.”

“Do you want to, um.” Jon grabs the hem of his shirt and twists, trying to do something with all of the nervous energy he has. He doesn’t keep cigarettes in the house anymore, doesn’t think that’s fair to Martin, but his chest is horribly tight and he aches for something to relieve it. “I can help you move out once your flat is, er, not infested anymore. And then maybe we could have a picnic in the park?”

“I haven’t been on a picnic since I was a kid,” Martin says wistfully, before a note of sadness enters his expression.

“That settles it, then! I’ll start thinking of dishes to cook.”

“It’s just a picnic, you don’t have to—“

“But I want to,” Jon insists. “I, well, I like making you happy. That’s one of the things I know for certain. Can you please let me treat you? I haven’t always been kind to you, and I— I think you deserve nice things, is all.”

“Jonathan Sims, are you asking to spoil me?” Martin teases, reaching out to poke Jon’s cheek. He looks shocked at his own boldness, but before he can start apologizing, Jon pokes him back.

“Maybe I am; what of it?” He says playfully, and leans in. “Think anyone will believe you?”

“Oh, Tim and Sasha definitely will, and that’s all that matters,” he says smugly. It’s a good expression on him, but Jon has barely a moment to savor it before it’s replaced by the usual anxiety. “Jon? Do you not want me to tell them?”

Ah. It was that obvious, then? Jon isn’t used to people reading him as well as Martin can. “I, um. I don’t know. I’m not always a fan of their teasing, but I make things worse instead of flat out telling them to stop, and— can we wait? Until we make it official. Between us, that is.”

“Yeah.” Martin reaches across the table, and their fingers meet.

Until then, Jon thinks he’s fine with holding hands. Just in the quiet moments when no one is looking, and they brush fingers or trace the lines and calluses. Jon aches to lean his whole body against Martin, to be held in his arms, but for now, he is waiting, letting the feeling bloom. The ache fills him with something deeper, something he can call love.

Jon knows Martin’s hands more intimately than his own.

* * *

Something has changed about Sasha.

Tim thinks he’s the only person who notices it, how absorbed she is in her work. She’s always been nosy, same as Tim’s always been something of a gossip, but they’ll accept their flaws and know how to reign themselves in if it hurts someone.

Except now, Tim’s afraid Sasha might hurt herself if she continues like this, and he has no idea if she’d stop or even slow down if he asked. It’s just a stupid hunch, after all. He doesn’t have any proof, anything more than a feeling.

Does he want to stop her? He respects her decision to pursue a career, of course; her drive is one of his favorite things about her. But that drive is what’s pushing her towards— Tim doesn’t even know. He just knows that supernatural shit isn’t something you want to be part of. What happens when the road ends?

Sasha is too much like Jon in some regards. Maybe that’s why Tim is starting to feel her eyes on the back of his neck, even when she’s not there.

 _Eyes._ Shit, that’s it! Tim pulls out his notebook, flipping through pages and pages of cases. Even though he’s still at the Institute, he likes to keep the bare bones information accessible at all times in case he finds a connection. And now, he’s finding plenty. Gerry Keay, the goth kid, painted realistic eyes and burned Leitners and had eyes tattooed on every joint. He knew things he had no way of knowing, and dumped his family trauma on strangers with no context. The box that just said ‘look behind you’, the security cameras, the island that was somehow protected from calamity by a camera with a cracked lens— they fit together.

Eyes and knowledge. A supernatural addiction. Jon’s newfound powers of compulsion, Sasha’s wildly accurate hunches, and the Magnus Institute.

Maybe it’s not as much as the others, but Tim’s got enough evidence to put together a new category. Another color of fear. Can he really condemn his friends like that, though? Like… like monsters? He puts away the notebook and goes home, unsure what to do, and spends his evening staring mindlessly at a blank wall.

(Later, he’ll curse himself for not noticing Martin listening in, waiting for an opening to ask what he was doing.)

* * *

Perhaps these changes are not so little, after all. But who can tell where this new path will lead?

Tonight, it leads Jon and Sasha down into the tunnels, as she shows him how she’s repurposed a Gameboy to detect the presence of the supernatural.

“See, this pattern,” she says, tapping a page in her notebook, “is the default, I think. It keeps showing up around the institute unless it’s around Artefact Storage, which— yeah. I try to avoid that. But certain statements, or even places, make it change. This pattern is connected to Michael for sure, and this one is connected to blood, I think.”

Jon remembers vague flashes of his dream, of finally achieving perfection in knowledge, and has to push down a wave of nausea. Sasha’s been working hard on this, and he’s proud of her. He can’t let something as silly as a nightmare get in the way.

“What’s this one mean?” he asks, pointing to the screen. 

“That’s the thing; I don’t know!” The buzz of the device grows slightly louder, even though her hands aren’t touching the volume controls. “Down here, you don’t get any of the Institute static, but it’s constantly shifting. I’ve tried mapping it out, but the corridors change.”

Jon stops dead in his tracks. “What do you mean, the corridors change?” 

Sasha waves him off, not even pausing. “It’s fine, they’ve been stable all week. See, right up here is— oh.”

“What?” Jon has to jog to catch up, unwilling to lose her in the pressing darkness, and huffs irritably when he finally reaches her. “Did it change again?”

“Maybe,” she starts, reaching out to feel the wall. “I think—”

“Hello, Archivist.” 

Sasha and Jon both spin wildly to find the speaker, torches strobing wildly across the stone walls until they find an old man holding a book. He’s pale and wrinkled, wearing a ratty old button down and a tie that may have once been blue. His face is stained, and clinging to it is the world’s shittiest beard. And despite looking like a washed-up sewer gremlin, he still manages to have an infuriating smirk that makes Jon want to punch him. 

“My name is Jurgen Leitner. I believe you’re familiar with my work?”

* * *

Jon barely keeps Sasha from finishing what Gereard Keay started.

“Stop it!” he yells, trying to wrestle the pipe away from her.

“He deserves it! He and his fucking books took my friend!” she growls, twisting the pipe out of Jon’s grasp.

“I get it, okay?” He lunges over her shoulder and grabs it with both hands, and Sasha overbalances and stumbles to her knees. Jon isn’t so lucky, and gets flipped onto his back with a thud. He gasps for air, trying to keep Sasha from doing something she’ll regret. “I... watched a boy being... devoured in front of me by a giant spider in one of his books, when I was seven.”

“Then why won’t you let me kill him?” Sasha demands, trying again to wrench the pipe back, but both of them are equally scrawny, so it’s a match of stubbornness if nothing else.

Jon gives the weapon a yank. “What’s the point?”

“I’d feel better,” she points out. Which is… a compelling argument, and Jon thinks he’d feel better as well, except for the fact that it’s completely illogical.

“He’s got to have some sort of supernatural knowledge, right? He could help us figure this out,” Jon insists. Sasha’s grip relaxes, just slightly, and he takes that as a sign to continue. “We’ll take him back to the Institute with us, and see what he knows. After that, we can make a decision.”

Leitner raises a tentative hand. “If I might interrupt— ”

“Try anything, and I’ll make you regret every second of your miserable existence,” Sasha snarls.

“I have quite an extensive knowledge of the Dread Powers and their manifestations,” he continues, quieter.

Sasha sighs, setting down the pipe and helping Jon up. “Fine. We’ll do it your way Think you can lend me your ability to rip this fucker’s secrets right out of his brain? ‘Cause I’d sure like to know why he thought it was a good idea to leave a book that turns people into dust lying around. For that matter, why did you even make it, huh?” She yanks Leitner up by the arm, and there’s a sharp pop.

“Please, I didn’t write them! All I did was collect them and put my library sticker on them,” Leitner begs, hanging limply in her grasp. “I thought myself a protector of humanity, gathering them all to use for good rather than evil, but they attracted too much attention and were scattered.”

“Do you mean to tell me you decided to collect eldritch artifacts like Pokémon and you didn’t see this coming?” Jon asks incredulously.

The old man squints at him. “What are Pokémon?”

Jon refuses to dignify that with a response and grabs his other arm, and together he and Sasha drag him back to the Institute for questioning. Sasha doesn’t let go of him until they reach the trapdoor, and even then it’s with a great deal of reluctance. She and Jon drag him up together, check for anyone who might be watching, and march him to a storage closet so they can be sure he won’t run away.

“Stay here,” Jon tells Leitner, before shutting and locking the door.

If this had happened a year ago, Jon would have said he needed a smoke. But now, he needs his friends, needs someone to talk about this with until his head stops spinning like it wants to fly away.

“I’m going to find Tim and Martin,” he tells Sasha, voice shaking. “Are you coming with?”

“No. No, I…” she blinks rapidly, fidgets with the buttons of her cardigan. “I need some time to cool off. If you want, I can tell you what happened— why I reacted like that. But right now I don’t trust myself to do that.”

“Okay. Meet you back here?”

“Yeah.”

They share a brief hug, and then Sasha heads for the doorway out into the alleyway where Jon used to take his smoke breaks. He wonders if it still smells of cigarettes, but it’s been years, and the London fog has probably wiped it clean.

Jon has changed, has leveraged himself against the pivotal moments of fate.

But some things are inevitable, if such a concept as inevitability exists.

* * *

He isn’t sure how it happens. Frankly, with the way he’s dissociating, it’s a miracle it happens at all, but somehow he ends up back in that intersection where he parted ways with Sasha. Martin and Tim are behind him, Sasha is leaning against the wall with her headphones in, and Jon wants to hold a hand. He’s not ashamed to admit he’s scared of what this means, but he knows Tim and Martin are probably even more confused. It’s not fair to leave him in the dark, but Jon can’t adequately explain, so he’s just going to show them Leitner and deal with the fallout when it comes.

But as they walk towards the storage closet, that hallway is dark, and the closet smells like iron and rot and dread. No, the dread is something he feels. He rushes ahead, ignoring the protests from the others. He needs to know what happened.

“Jurgen? Are you—“ Jon opens the door with a creak, and stumbles back, falling to the carpet. His right hand is sticky with fresh blood. The footsteps behind him bring horrified gasps, as they see what’s left of the man. It’s not much, and it’s not pretty or clean.

“I’m going to be sick,” Martin whispers. Tim beats him to it, rushing to a trash can and emptying his stomach into it. Sasha clutches at her cardigan like a lifeline, and eyes glassy.

Jurgen Leitner lies bleeding and broken on the ground, and at his feet a tape player slowly spins.

Elsewhere, a child of the Spider picks up the spindle and marvels at the colors that have been spun. Pushing back her hood, she plucks out a strand of her pale hair. _Now,_ the game begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am politely asking that readers under the age of 18 not google barnacle reproduction methods, and that adult readers would please use discretion. I’m keeping this fic rated T for swearing and non-explicit mentions of sex, but I sadly cannot say the same for the cursed supplementary research.
> 
> ...I regret several things.
> 
> Anyways! Lot of stuff happened, and I’d be glad to hear feedback! When I said shitty old men can and do die, I meant it.


	5. Unravel, darling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *pink in the night by mitski plays while Jon stares at the ceiling and yearns*

“So.” Basira shuts the door behind her and sits across from Martin. They’re in a small office, repurposed for individual questioning, and cut off from the rest of the Institute. “Where were you at the time of the murder?”

“I was getting lunch with my coworker.”

“Timothy Stoker, correct?” She jots down a few words. “What’s your relationship with him?”

“Nothing! We’re not— we’re not in a relationship, okay? I’m— well, I was— there’s someone else. And Tim is just a friend. A good friend who gives good hugs.” He nods firmly, like he’s trying more to convince himself.

She sets down her pen with a doubtful look. “...right. I’m only asking because the testimony of a significant other is inadmissible. So, can anyone vouch for you?”

“Our waiter. Her name is Trisha, she has strawberry blonde hair and lives near the river. But if you go and check with her, knock first, please? Her dog just got neutered and has been very tired from surgery, and her landlord won’t disable the doorbell and he wakes up and barks every time a package gets delivered,” Martin tells her.

“How exactly do you know this?”

“Well, I sort of calculated and paid while we were waiting for the food to arrive so that Tim wouldn’t feel like he had to take up the bill, and then I got to chatting and she showed me pictures of her dog. His name is Tucker, and he’s a cocker spaniel who just turned three last month, and he’s got the  _ cutest  _ little ears.”

“You went behind your friend’s back to pay the bill before it even  _ arrived _ ?”

He cringes. “I’ve got anxiety, okay? Don’t judge.”

* * *

Basira sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose as the next person comes in. She’d hoped not to see Tim again after he tried to flirt with her and Basira; it’s not that he acted entitled or out of line, but this isn’t exactly the ideal situation to meet again. “Martin tells me you two went out to lunch together. Was this lunch romantic in nature?”

“What are you, a homophobe?” Tim asks.

Basira gives him a flat look. “I told you last time, I’m gay.”

“You’re dodging the question.”

“I’m the one asking the questions here, Stoker.”

“I don’t see why you’re still questioning us!” He protests, gesturing wildly. “All of us can alibi each other, and if you have any experience with the supernatural, you’d know that you can’t swing a cat without finding a motive to kill Jurgen Leitner.”

“Right. And your friend Sasha has plenty of that, doesn’t she?”

* * *

“Listen, if I was going to kill him, do you think I would have done something as stupid as becoming a suspect?” Sasha asks. “It was in the heat of the moment, and I grabbed a pipe that was lying nearby and swung. Jon stopped me, said the old man might know something useful, and we dragged him upstairs together.”

“Right.” Basira leans forward, looking unconvinced. “You also dislocated his shoulder. That’s not easy to do.”

“I… let my emotions get the better of me,” Sasha says carefully. “Working in Section 31, you know what his books do, right?”

“I’ve had experience with a few. Heard of a few more. It’s a shame the man’s dead; I’ve got some questions I’d like to ask him.”

“Yeah, and so do we. It makes no sense to kill him without questioning him first; we’re academics, for crying out loud. We  _ need  _ to know more, and Jurgen Leitner was a golden goose.”

“Hm.” Basira takes a few more notes. “You said you touched the murder weapon?”

“Yeah. I grabbed it when Jurgen Leitner introduced himself.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because one of his books killed an old friend of mine right in front of me.” Sasha looks away, twisting a strand of hair in her fingers. “I won’t say that Jurgen Leitner didn’t deserve to die painfully, because he did. And in a way, I’m glad he’s gone. But I wouldn’t gain anything from killing him.”

“I know,” Basira admits. “That’s why our prime suspect is Jon.”

“What?” Sasha rewinds the conversation in her head, trying to figure out how anyone could reach that conclusion. Jon could barely  _ hold  _ the pipe, much less beat a man to death with it. “No. That can’t be.”

Basira leans forward, mouth drawn in a thin line and eyes expressionless. “Your fingerprints weren’t anywhere on the murder weapon, but his were. So I’m afraid I can’t trust your testimony. You’re covering for him; that’s the only reason you would say that. Not to mention there’s a gap of time in which you were outside, and the security camera clearly shows you alone and listening to music. That would leave Jon more than enough time to beat him to death.”

* * *

“You know me. You know I wouldn’t do it,” Jon insists.

“Do I really?” Basira asks, but her tone is more contemplative than confrontational. “It’s been almost a decade. Time changes people, Jon.”

“And do you think I could have become a physically violent person during the time since the band dissolved?”

“Your coworker Sasha has a degree in library science and steals cardigans when she’s cold, but basically admitted that her best alibi is the fact that cold blooded murder wasn’t in her best interest at the time.”

“I’m sure she was trying to think like you when she said that,” Jon argues.

“Thinking like the police is one thing. Lying to the police about a murder case is another. What really happened down there?”

“I already told you!”

“Then tell me again, but this time, tell the truth.”

“The— the tape should have some kind of evidence, shouldn’t it?”

“The tape’s corrupted to hell and back.”

“...Figures.” Of course, the one thing that could prove his innocence is just another mystery. He wonders if Sasha could decipher the static— maybe the sound of blood and violence? Except if the supernatural is involved... “Remember the bifrost incident?”

“Where you played Inspector Lyf?”

“Yeah. Petty motives, a corrupted tape, and finally an ancient being that wipes away everything in a wave of cosmic horror.”

Basira leans forward, eyes narrowed. “What are you trying to imply here, Jon?

“Let me listen to the tape,” he insists. 

It’s stupid, and he’s not sure where the urge comes from, but he figures he’s developing— well, some sort of knowledge-based ability set. He can ask people to reveal their darkest secrets, so why can’t the same hold true for this little box of metal and plastic? Something about it is connected to the Institute static, in a way that lets it hold a record of the supernatural.

For some reason, she takes out the tape and plays it for him. Her face is impassive as it spins out its tale. And Elias is— is— 

Elias has known all along. Elias knows more than Jon. Elias calls Jon  _ his  _ archivist in a casually possessive way that makes Jon want to throw up, says he can’t have Jurgen stunting Jon’s development by telling him all about this. His voice...is slimy. Disgusting. And Jon was an idiot to ever let his suspicions pass by. Only someone with something to hide would pretend to be a skeptic in the Magnus Institute, and Jon is revolted by how similar they are.

No. No, they  _ were _ similar, but they have never been the same. Elias killed someone today, has been manipulating Jon for some plan— but Jon has been clawing his way out of unhealthy coping mechanisms for the past two years. Maybe he’s not brave enough to wear his casual (read: alt/punk) clothes to work yet; maybe he’s still repressed and feels like this duality is going to tear him in two, but he still  _ tries. _ He’s making progress and he will not let anything take that away from him. 

He is not like Elias Bouchard.

Jon opens his eyes. He’s not sure when he closed them. Frankly, he’s grateful that there are only two of them on his face. “Did you— did you just hear that?” he asks, voice hoarse.

“If this is your way of saying you plan to plead insanity, you should save it for your lawyer.”

“Elias killed Jurgen Leitner,” Jon breathes. “I— I heard it happen, the entire thing was on tape. You can’t hear it?”

“You do realize how far-fetched that sounds, right?”

“Just last week, I read a story about a homophobic vase that gaslit a man, ate his husband, and stole Gertrude Robinson’s pen. Nothing is impossible here.”

“Fine. I’ll look into it, see if I can clear your name.”

“What about—  **your partner? Will she try to hurt me?”**

“She will if she sees that extra eye,” Basira immediately responds, then clamps a hand over her mouth. “What— What the hell are you?”

“I don’t know anymore. I’m sorry. This— this just happens, and I’ve been trying my best to ignore it because I don’t know how the fuck else to cope with whatever this is.” Jon grabs his hair, trying to configure it in a way that’ll cover the eye he knows is open on his forehead, and ends up scratching at it again. Shit. Maybe the bloody mess on his face will distract people, but he can’t stop, keeps ripping at the skin like a compulsion until—

“Then run,” Basira says plainly.

“What? Basira, I—“

“Run. If you’re changing into something, that means Daisy’s already got her mind set on killing you. She has a way of sniffing out mon— ones like you. I’ll try to distract her, but you need to find a place to hide and be ready if things go south. It’s early enough yet. And if you’re telling the truth about Elias, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I don’t know what you are, but I think there’s something left of my friend in you. And that’s worth a single chance.” With that, she opens the door of the meeting room, her eyes never leaving Jon.

* * *

“Hi… Georgie.”

“Jon!” Georgie immediately pulls him inside and into a hug. He’s trembling, and freezing cold too. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Did you walk all the way here?”

“No, I, er, ran.” He rests his chin flat on her shoulder, just like the Admiral does, and she can feel even through his coat how ragged his breathing is. “I… something happened. I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Jon,” she says, grabbing him by the shoulders. He won’t look her in the eye, has his hood pulled up so she can barely make out the upper half of his face. “Are you in danger? Do you need me to call anyone?”

“I— I don’t think so? Other than the usual amount of danger, because apparently ever since I got eaten by worms there’s something— something, something watching, I don’t know. Also the feral cop. Maybe we should sit down. Yeah. I— or not? I’m kind of on the run for murder, so I don’t know if it’s dangerous to stay here, and— ”

“You did  _ what? _ ”

“I didn’t! It was Elias, he— well, you know the, um, book I told you about? A guest for Mr. Spider?” Jon runs a hand through his hair, flakes of what looks like crusted blood falling from his forehead. “Uh— how much are you comfortable with knowing? This is— I think, knowing it is dangerous. I don’t want to keep you in the dark, but I don’t want to drag you into it either.”

“Okay, that’s it. I’m making tea, and you’re going to explain this— but no details. Just the bare bones, so I know what you’re up against.” She can’t handle details, can’t handle the numb, clawing sensation that takes the place of fear. She doesn’t know whether it was from trauma or something supernatural, but she’s  _ shutting that out _ of her life. 

Of course she still cares about Jon. She’s never stopped. But there have to be boundaries.

* * *

“I’m not sure where to start.” Jon stares into the contents of the mug, wishing Martin were here. He just wants a hug, he wants to be buried in Martin’s large arms and cozy sweater, he wants to be okay. He wants to keep making tea with Martin. But he is here, in Georgie’s flat, and her tea just doesn’t taste the same.

“Well, what’s on your mind? What’s the most important thing out of all this that’s been consuming your thoughts?”

“I almost have a boyfriend and he gives amazing hugs and I’m yearning for his arms,” Jon says honestly, then looks up to see Georgie regarding him with a mixture of confusion and amusement. “What? You asked.”

“...yeah, start from the beginning.”

“That would be… when I was promoted, I think. I’m fairly certain my boss has been… manipulating me towards some sort of... transformation. The supernatural sort.”

“What, like, he’s been slipping fae blood into your tea or something?”

“No, I— ” Jon hesitates, unsure how to phrase this. “I’m not sure if it’s the title of Archivist, or the statements I read, but I’ve developed… certain abilities. And the deeper I dig, trying to find out why, the more I see that there are others like me, other— monsters, Avatars, there’s a pattern, there are, there are  _ categories,  _ and I think I’m falling headfirst into one of them, and I don’t know if you’ll believe me but— ”

“I do,” Georgie cuts him off. “I’ve had my own brush with the supernatural. I know there are… things in this world, things that can’t be explained.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” She looks at the cup in her hands like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “Listen, whatever’s happening to you— I’m sorry, but I don’t want to know. I can’t be the one to help you with this.”

**“Why not?”**

“Because the last time I ran into one of those things, I ended up numb to fear and wishing to die.” She fumbles and nearly drops her teacup, but catches it at the last minute and sets it down, curling into herself. “Christ, that was— that was it, wasn’t it?”

Jon gulps on nothing but a dry throat. “I’m so sorry, Georgie, I— ”

“Please don’t.” 

Jon doesn’t. 

Georgie rocks, just slightly, back and forth.

Jon sets down his tea.

Georgie sighs. “Okay. So you have this ability that can… make people answer questions. Even ones they don’t want to. Does anyone else know?”

“My team: Martin, Sasha, and Tim.” Jon considers a moment longer. “Probably Elias as well. My boss.”

“Do you have any idea why he’s doing this?”

“No. I don’t. I… might have to confront him. But he killed a man for trying to tell me— something that would stunt my development, he said. And I took the fall.”

“That’s...” Georgie sucks in a breath. “That’s creepy on so,  _ so _ many levels. What, he just hired you to groom you into his personal monster? Jon, you need to get out of that place as soon as possible. Use your vacation days as your two weeks notice or something— I don’t want to see you turn into something I don’t recognize anymore, okay?”

“But if I do that, how many mysteries will go unsolved?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I can’t make your decision for you, but...” She sighs, resting her chin on her knees. “People like us, sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own worlds that it’s hard to see the truth. At least think about it, okay? Don’t make a mistake because you’re afraid of not knowing. Sometimes, it’s better not to know.”

“You have to know in order to make an informed decision, though,” Jon insists, flipping open his phone. “I need to tell the others what I heard at some point, I just… gah, what if they’re suspected because of that? What if you get in trouble for harboring me because the signal gets traced back here?”

“Well, you’ve got until Monday, don’t you?” Georgie points out.

“Right.” It’s Friday, which means the others won’t go back to work and back to Elias for a few days. Jon lets out a sigh of relief. He’s got time, time to sort out his thoughts and help everyone. “I’m, er, off to bed, I think. It’s getting late, I’m sure the Admiral has already stolen your pillow, and the adrenaline crash is going to leave me passed out on the floor if I don’t.”

“Do you know this from experience or something?”

“Look at the time! Awfully tired, you know. Good night!” Jon clambers to his feet, wincing as his muscles lock up and protest their treatment. “Er, is it alright if I sleep in the guest bedroom? Or have you repurposed it since I was last here?”

“It’s fine. You might have to move some of my recording stuff, but at least that’ll keep me from staying up all night looking for sound effects.” She gives him a wry smile. “I probably can’t tease you too much about your sleeping habits when mine aren’t much better.”

“They’re not  _ that  _ bad! They’ve gotten better since Martin moved in!”

“Hold on, your almost boyfriend  _ moved in  _ with you? Spill the tea, Jon!”

“GOOD NIGHT!”

* * *

Daisy stares sullenly out the window of the squad car, the moonlight turning her hair to silver. “I don’t see why we’re going to question Elias first. Jon’s probably on the move.”

“He’s not the type to run,” Basira tells her confidently. “He doesn’t have many places to go, after all. Heck, I could count on one hand the places he might be hiding out. We gain a lot more than we risk by doing it this way.”

“You let him go on purpose,” Daisy realizes.

“Of course. I wouldn’t let any previous friendships get in the way of our job. If the lead on Elias doesn’t pay off, give me five minutes online and I can find him.”

Basira knows, knows that Daisy has been getting more… active in her pursuit of suspects, and not so discerning of innocence or guilt. Daisy is a loose cannon, but so long as she trusts Basira to aim, they’re the perfect team. Inseparable. It’s a comforting thought, that Daisy will never leave her, that Daisy needs her just as desperately as she is needed.

They pull into the Institute parking lot just after three, and nod to each other in a wordless agreement as they get out of the car. Daisy pushes past confused employees as if they’re nothing more than irritating blades of grass in the way of her chase, and Basira follows in her wake. The end justifies the means, she tells herself, and maybe she believes it this time.

Elias is waiting at his desk, as smug as if he’d been expecting them but thought it would be cliche to announce himself as such. Daisy cuts right to the chase, approaching him with the sort of walk that makes most people break down by the time she reaches them. Elias just moves one last cell on his spreadsheet and smiles genially at her.

“Officer Tonner. I take it you’re here to accuse me of murder?” he says, tone light and airy as if he’s confirming an appointment for brunch.

Daisy just gives him a feral grin, planting a boot on his desk. “No need for introductions, huh? What exactly are you? You’ve got the same smell as that Archivist. Like something rotten.”

“Quite astute,” Elias remarks. Basira gets the same sensation as earlier, when Jon asked her that question and she felt the pressing weight of a thousand eyes staring at her. She pushes down the instinctive reaction to look around wildly; Elias is the only one in this room she needs to watch. “Well, seeing as I’ve got a recorder running already, why don’t I give my confession and we can decide what to do?”

“Try anything funny, and I’ll rip out your throat,” Daisy snarls.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” he replies mildly. “Now, statement of Elias Bouchard, regarding the murder of Calvin Benchley. Statement torn from the mind of Alice Tonner. Shall I continue?”

Daisy is trembling, but whether it’s from rage or something else, Basira can’t tell. She nearly reaches out a hand to put on her partner’s shoulder, but draws back at the last minute. Something tells her it won’t be welcome.

“Daisy?” She asks instead, softly, ever so softly.

“He was a monster. He deserved it.”

“And you’re no better,” Elias says lightly. “Don’t go throwing stones, Alice. We could use someone like you on our team; believe it or not, there are worse monsters than the small fry you’ve been hunting. The world is in danger, and I have never had anything but its best interests at heart.”

“And if I refuse to play your game?”

He grins, like that’s what he’s been waiting for all along.  **_“Statement begins.”_ **

* * *

Saturday passes in a haze of half-familiar routines and worry. Jon makes breakfast, Georgie frets over his weight, and somehow an entire pan of eggs get burned as they laugh over her disastrous date with a mountain climber who she only went out with for the food. His name started with J or something, she tells him, and then goes into detail about how incredible and spicy her meal was.

He’s missed this. He’s missed Georgie. The world tells him that their relationship as exes should be bitter and conflicted, but the truth is, they were always better off as friends. What’s so wrong with showing platonic affection? Is the romantic ideal of true love the only kind that’s valued?

He refuses to accept that. He refuses to let the world invalidate the way he loves any longer.

And when he tells Georgie what Sasha helped him figure out, that he’s not broken but simply asexual— well. She hugs him tight, and says she’s glad he finally found a word for it. And they sit and talk and laugh, about labels and crushes and all of the signs they should have seen. Maybe it was stupid to deny it to himself for so long. Or maybe he denied it because the internalized hatred would have broken him before. But he’s older now, stronger and more determined.

And that’s why he has to do this.

He plans his route carefully, just after noon when the lunch rush crowds will hide him best. It’s cold enough that no one questions why his hat is pulled so low, or his scarf so high, and his breath comes out in short gasps that burn his throat. He avoids subways, anywhere someone’s gaze might linger on him for too long, and walks until his toes are freezing and his legs ache. 

All his life has revolved around libraries, hasn’t it? It started with a book, and then it peaked at the Archives. He wonders, briefly, if that’s a bad omen of some sort. But no; that’s silly thinking. It’s just the nearest place he can get untraceable computer use for free, but he’ll have to be quick about it.

He dashes through the front door and makes his way around patrons, most of them too absorbed in their own reading to even notice him. A bored looking redhead who’s maybe in uni is walking a younger girl through calculus problems, and there’s a pair of boys giggling in the children’s area while their mothers gossip over foam cups from the cafe next store, but none of them pose any threat.

When did— when did Jon start thinking about people like that? Even if he’s on the run, it’s not right, it’s not— it’s not right. These are just regular people going about their lives, and Jon feels sick for reducing people to the amount of harm they could potentially cause him.

He needs to hurry. Can’t be out here too long, so he pulls up a chair at the farthest computer and logs into his work email. His personal one would be preferable, but the others don’t know it.

The message is brief, just a few sentences, even though it takes much longer due to the thick, clumsy gloves. His fingers are still numb from the cold, and he can’t afford to leave fingerprints behind.

_ Hello all, _

_ I’m safe and staying with a friend. Elias committed the murder; he’s not what he seems. I don’t have tangible evidence yet, but my first priority is everyone’s safety. I am trusting you to use your best discretion. _

Just a brief click, and it’s sent. Jon hastily logs off, then pulls his scarf up and leaves. He doesn’t watch the people around him for threats this time, just lets the feeling of being watched build up inside of him until he collapses on the right side of Georgie’s door again, just trying to breathe.

Shit. He can’t keep living like this. He’s halfway to messaging the groupchat for emotional support when he remembers that he pried the battery from his phone for a reason, and he can hear Georgie upstairs through the walls and he can’t disturb her either, so he’s just… alone.

He peels off his shoes and coat, picks up the Admiral from his sunbeam, and settles on the couch. He used to complain when Georgie’s cat stepped on him, but now, the pressure feels… nice. No, not just that, he realizes; he’s trying to compensate for the fact that he hungers for someone to touch him. He wants to be held, and he wants to be safe in someone’s arms, and he misses that more than anything. The Admiral is small, but curled up on Jon’s chest, it’s some amount of warmth. 

He’s not sure how long he lays there; at some point, he thinks he falls asleep, because the next thing he knows, there are sharp claws digging into his chest. He flails, caught up in blind panic and someone grabs his wrist and he’s— 

“Jon, it’s okay,” she says. Jon relaxes, but her cold grip remains rigid around his hand and that’s not Georgie. That’s not Georgie at all.

Jon’s eyes snap open, flicking around the near complete darkness, trying to find— trying to find what, the identity of his attacker?

“What—  **what do you—** ”

Faster than he can react, he’s swung around and slammed into something, knocking the breath out of him with a sharp crack. Or maybe— bones? Maybe that was his bones, breaking? His head is swimming, sound and thoughts distorted, and there’s this music that just won’t go away. This eerie sound from nowhere and everywhere, like…  _ oh _ . 

Oh no. 

He remembers this; remembers when he and Tim and Sasha crowded around her laptop and bickered over how to pronounce ‘calliope’, when Tim added a photocopy to his compilation of personal research. It’s the song of the Circus, isn’t it. The Admiral is nowhere to be found, lucky bastard.

“Hello, Archivist!” his assailant chirps. Jon scrambles for his phone, trying to pull up the flashlight so he can see. “Ah, ah, ah! I wouldn’t do that if I were you. And no more questions, either. I’m being nice, but I  _ did  _ bring my flensing things as well.”

Jon slowly puts his phone back in his pocket, bursting with curiosity but unable to see much of anything besides a faint silhouette.

Except— 

Except he recognizes that voice. It’s been so long since university, but he’s listened to it every now and again, and that songbird-like cadence is unique to a certain bandmate of his.

“Jessica?” he whispers.

A small movement of the shadow; could be a shrug, or a step closer. “Maybe. It’s a name I used, once.”

“But you— you just—” He remembers the ache in his ribs, and pushes down the question that threatens to bubble out. “I don’t know what changed.”

“I suppose I liked being the Toy Soldier too much,” she muses, tone becoming soft and wistful. “But none of us could have carried on. And so that persona died when we graduated. I drifted around a few subcultures trying to recapture the feeling of being detached from my humanity, and then I found Gregor Orsinov and his daughter. I couldn’t tell you what happened next. But I am not the me that I was. Part of her, maybe. And that part liked you, Jon. You were her friend.

“But you are not you, either. You are the Archivist. So you will naturally oppose us when we dance the world anew, which makes us enemies, and it makes this a threat.”

“Jess, what—” Jon begins, but is pinned to the wall by a cold plastic hand around his neck before he can finish.

“The Other Circus offers you an ultimatum, Archivist. There is a skin, an ancient one, that Gertrude stole from us and hid. Find the skin, or we will use yours, and you will feel us as we peel you from your body. Or,” her plastic gaze softens again. “Find us a reason not to dance.”

Jon has so many questions to ask of his old bandmate, his friend who became this thing, but his throat is crushed. His throat is crushed and he should be dead, but it knits itself back together. Slowly, painstakingly, his body repairs itself. He is regenerating. He is impossible. He is a monster.

Jon can breathe again, but that doesn’t mean he’s human, or alive.

* * *

It’s not the same, meeting in Sasha’s flat. Her couch is too big, and Tim misses Jon’s presence next to him, even if Jon’s whole eyeball schtick scares him sometimes. At least Jon knows he’s scary, and reacts properly.

Sasha… doesn’t care. She’s constantly moving forward, nonstop, and she’s leaving them behind. And Tim feels so distant from her right now, it’s like a piece of him is missing.

That’s what it means to fall in love, doesn’t it? To leave behind a piece of your heart. Tim has loved, and loved freely in his time, but he is in love with Sasha James in a way that he doesn’t think he’ll ever love again.

He doesn’t want to lose her, but Jon’s absence has left a gap in their little group, an empty and unstable patch that he’s afraid to disturb. They’ll clear Jon’s name, bring him home, and they’ll be back together, just the four of them. 

Then he can try talking to Sasha about this.

“So,” Martin begins. There’s no pinboard this time. Nothing to look at but each other, and the wallpaper. Not even Sasha’s roommate to break the silence, since she’s out for the night and said she wouldn’t be back until past midnight.

Sasha grabs a throw pillow, one with an elaborate pattern of embroidered daisies spelling out  _ merde  _ in swirling font. “Yeah. Guess we’ve gotta address the elephant in the room, right?”

“You know Jon didn’t do it,” Tim says, because why the fuck not. He might as well start if neither of them are willing to. “I mean, he wouldn’t, right?”

“Of course he wouldn’t!” Martin wheels on Tim, slamming his hand down on the table with a sharp crack. “How could you say that?”

“I’m pretty sure Tim’s just asking for assurance,” Sasha says, pulling Martin back down onto the couch. “Trust me, Jon doesn’t have the guts to do it. And I’m not saying this to insult him, I just— he’s not the kind of person who’s capable of it.”

“Mm. He hides it, but he really is a softie,” Martin agrees. Damn, he’s yearning hard. If things were calmer, Tim thinks he’d tease Martin about that— except they’re not. Nothing is right, so he lets the words die in his throat.

“What about you, Sash?” Tim asks gently. Because he has to ask this of her. “Would you have done it?”

“I’m not saying if he was in front of me I would murder him, or that I would have gone through with it. Just that I might have broken a few of his bones.” She’s staring at anything but the two of them. “Remember Becky, who used to work in Artefact Storage with me? This was before I met you guys.”

“Didn’t she go missing?” Martin asks.

“That was the official story, yeah. But… what really happened is, she stumbled upon one of Leitner’s books. There wasn’t really anything left of her, so she was officially declared missing rather than dead. But I know there isn’t any coming back from what happened to her.”

“Shit, I— I didn’t know, Sash.”

“That’s because I don’t like to talk about it.” She huffs out a long sigh. “We’re not really getting anywhere with this tonight; let’s just try again tomorrow. Wanna make fun of dumb movies or something?”

“That sounds nice,” Martin says softly. “Most of my taste is slice of life stuff, but I think I’d like that. Nice for when you want to turn your brain off.”

“I… have something else to do tonight. Sorry, Sash.” Tim gives her a half smile before grabbing his coat and opening the door. “See you around, okay?”

He’s not going to. He walks out into the slurry of London weather that’s almost snow but not quite rain, and wonders how the hell his life turned into this. 

Sasha’s got her own shit to worry about. Enough that Tim can’t work up the energy to be properly upset at her, not when she’s in this state, except he can’t comfort her either. Martin’s going to worry and fret, but ultimately stay by her side. Because that’s the kind of person he is, in the end. He feels most responsible for the emotions that he can see, the most immediate sort, the kind close enough to soothe with a warm cup of tea.

No one’s coming to ask Tim if he’s okay, and there’s a strange comfort in the inevitability of it all. 

* * *

Early the next morning, barely after the sun has risen, Jon leaves Georgie’s. His bed is made, the dishes are clean, and there are waffles in the fridge for her. Easy come, easy go, right? It’s the least he can do to repay her hospitality.

But he can’t forget the words that pierce straight to the core of what it is that he’s becoming.

_ I think there’s something left of my friend in you. _

_ Archivist. _

_ Monster. _

_ Avatar. _

_ What the hell are you? _

Maybe Jon isn’t a person. Maybe he’s just piecemeal and remnants. But he still loves, doesn’t he? He has that left.

“You need anchors,” Georgie told him once, when they were back in uni and he was trying to quit smoking again.

And he does. But he also needs to keep the people he loves safe. He closes the door behind him carefully, so that it doesn’t click, and turns to face the uncertain world.

But the first thing he sees is a familiar face. 

* * *

“Tim!” Somehow, Jon is there. He’s wearing a What The Ghost hoodie, with his hair tied up in a loose ponytail, and he’s got a frantic expression as he crosses the street at a run. “Tim, oh my god, are you okay?”

“You’re on the run for murder; why the fuck are you asking  _ me _ that?” Tim demands. Because what’s Jon doing out in the open?

“Because you looked sad.” Jon sucks in a breath. “No. I’ve never been good at reading emotions, I just— I Knew, I’m sorry. It’s getting worse.”

A shiver of ice runs through Tim’s veins at that, at the idea of Jon becoming one of those… those things. “Jon, look at me. You are… you are the Jon I know, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am.” He doesn’t look entirely certain, though.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I— Tim, I— she wasn’t, she was, but— called me Archivist— like Elias, I’m not— I think I’m me, but I can’t be sure, but I think, I hope, I’m mostly me, and the person you all know: Jon.”

“Jon, you’re— you’re not making any sense!” Tim runs a hand through his hair, beginning to pace in frustration. “I get it, okay? We’re all going through some really fucked up stuff, but I need to know if I can trust you.”

“So do I, Tim. You’re not special.”

“Yeah, well I’d rather not be!” Tim snaps. Something is wrong, something is very wrong in the early morning street, but he can’t see it through the tunnel vision that’s going red red red. “There’s an eye category, with the security cameras and the goth kid’s tattoos and you. You’re one of those freaks you keep chasing; how do you feel about that, huh?”

“I never asked for this!” Jon yells. His voice echoes too much, and the not-silence feels wrong.

“Jon?” The adrenaline is fading, replaced by a creeping fear. Tim’s been here before, or somewhere like this, hasn’t he? Not this place, exactly, but the nightmares and flashbacks, or the dissociation.

“What.”

“Shut up. There’s something that feels… wrong.” He can’t quite put his finger on it, but suddenly he’s not sure if he’s dreaming or not. There’s music, there’s music that keeps spiralling around in his head and in his dreams, and then the word finally comes to him.

“There are several things,” Jon replies drily.

“Don’t you hear it?” Tim says urgently. “The calliope? It’s faint, but—”

Oh. OH.  _ Fuck. _

“‘Scuse us,” someone says in a low Cockney accent, “are you Jonathan Sims?”

They both turn to see a delivery truck Tim knows all too well from the statements he’s read, and a pair of hulking deliverymen whose faces look like they were slapped on crookedly. 

_ “Oh, shi—” _

* * *

Some things are inevitable.

Jon keels over, gasping, but rips open the eye on his forehead and commands with all the power he can muster,  **“What is your worst fear?”**

“Losing my other half,” Breekon replies. Then his face twists into an ugly grimace, and he grabs Jon’s face with a massive, callused hand. “No more of that from you, little Archivist.”

Jon can’t speak, can barely breathe around Breekon’s hand, but he lashes out and digs his nails into Breekon’s arm, kicks wildly, doing anything he can think of in his panic. Breekon’s skin feels like poorly tanned leather stretched over a water bed infested with algae and half full of pudding; it’s every unpleasant texture Jon can think of all, swirled into sensory hell and clamped around his face.

There’s an awful crack that sounds like bone breaking, and Jon flails desperately, because what if that was Tim? It’s all Jon’s fault for giving away too much in the email; he never should have dragged anyone else into this. He squirms and bites at the disgusting facsimile of flesh until finally he’s dropped like a sack of bricks onto the asphalt, and his fears are realized.

Tim is bleeding from a wound to his head, his eyes glazed and confused. Hope lifts him up by the midsection as if he’s a particularly naughty cat, and Tim swipes helplessly but doesn’t have the strength or mental clarity for anything more.

“Stop!” Jon cries, and all three of them turn to look at him. Tim coughs, something that looks suspiciously like blood flying from his mouth, and Jon can’t help but feel he’s made a terrible mistake, but he carries on anyways. “Don’t— don’t hurt him, please. It’s me you want, right?”

“All we need is skin, powerful skin for Miss Orsinov.” Breekon crouches in front of Jon, with an awful grin. “And you—“

“— are quite powerful, but—“

“—stubborn nonetheless.”

“We needed something to keep you in line.”

“We were going to let you search for longer, but the opportunity was just too good to pass up.”

“So do what we ask, and—“

“—he will get to keep his face and name for a little longer.”

“Don’t do it, Jon!” Tim yells suddenly, flecks of blood flying from his lips. Hope squeezes tight, and there’s an awful crunch that makes Tim cry out in pain. Still, he grits his teeth and looks Jon dead in the eye. “Rather… die… than…”

“I’m not losing you, damnit! They will  _ not _ take you away from me. Enough with the revenge; aren’t we worth living for?”

Maybe Jon’s words got through to him. Or maybe it’s the shock from internal bleeding. But Tim is unresponsive as Hope lifts him up and hoists him into the back of the van. 

“Behave yourself, Archivist,” they say in eerie unison, and Jon goes limp.

He can’t win. He can’t win this no matter what he does, and so he stops trying. Tim is unmoving except for the steady rise and fall of his chest. But he’s breathing. He’s still breathing and he’s going to stay alive so long as Jon cooperates, until— until something. Until this nightmare ends?

“Okay,” Jon says quietly. “Okay. I won’t cause trouble.”

“Knew you’d see it our way,” Breekon says with a chuckle, and tosses him inside.

“You should be grateful to us—” 

“— for allowing both of you to dance.” 

Their laughter doesn’t end even when they slam the door and leave him in darkness.

Even if it is inevitable, it isn’t hopeless. Because what he does and who he loves matters. Jon has to believe in that.

* * *

Elsewhere, a thread begins to fray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This world’s Jessica Law is Nikola Orsinov in the same way that Michael Shelley is not the Spiral, and I refuse to uncomplicate it.
> 
> Anyways, seeing as this hyperfixation is fading, I want to give this story a satisfying conclusion before it’s gone completely. I can’t say how many more chapters it will take, or what it’s going to require, but I’ll do my best.


End file.
